Water Accounting

Water Accounting Framework for the Minerals Industry

Many minerals operations and companies have water accounting systems in place to measure, monitor and report water use. However these systems are often not consistent across companies or even operations. This can make understanding industry water use by company or region and cross-sectoral comparisons difficult.

The business case for consistent water accounting for the minerals industry is founded in:

• Improved capability for the industry to report sustainable use of water resources, in a consistent and contextual manner.
• Regulatory reform to promote efficiencies in current reporting arrangements.
• Benchmarking opportunities for operations within a region to support identification of potential efficiency measures.
• Increased recognition of industry as a responsible steward of natural resources, through development, application and reporting of water accounts.
• Application of a robust framework for identifying and quantifying water flows and their relationship with supply contracts, license conditions and climatic variables.
• Increased capability of the markets and regulators to quantify water quality and therefore support water access pricing arrangements that reflect water quality and source.
• Supporting strategic land use planning processes, so that over-allocation of water resources is avoided.

In response to the above business case, the Minerals Council of Australia in conjunction with the Sustainable Minerals Institute of the University of Queensland, have developed a Water Accounting Framework for the Minerals Industry.

Minerals Council of Australia member companies have endorsed an initial phase of framework adoption which includes:

• The alignment of company water metrics and definitions consistent with the Framework’s Input Output Model.
• Using these metrics to meet an existing company water reporting requirement (e.g. Global Reporting Initiative Requirements).

To support the implementation of the Water Accounting Framework, a number of guidance tools are under development. These include an initial implementation Manual and Input-Output Model Framework template, which have been provided to assist minerals industry users in applying the framework.

In addition to the guidance material provided, an implementation workshop program will be undertaken in early 2012.

Download the User Guide V1.1Download the Input-Output Template