Step 3a is divided into five tasks

• Task 1 - Identify the basin of activity or location

  The first task in Step 3 Freshwater is to identify the water basin in which the activity you are setting targets for takes place. In Steps 1 and 2, you used location data at any scale—country, subnational jurisdiction, municipality, or coordinates are likely to be in your data.

  But at this point, it is necessary to identify the location of the activity in terms of water basins instead of administrative divisions. SBTN uses the Pfafstetter Coding System, which employs a hierarchical, nested approach to classify and group river basins. The Pfafstetter system defines six levels, where Level 6 basins are contained within Level 5 basins; Level 5 basins are contained within Level 4 basins, and so on. Identifying either the Level 4 or Level 5 basin where your activity is located is a good starting point for the following tasks in the method, although it is possible that you may need to get further granularity on the river basin location.

  Output(s) of this task:

  • Identification of the basin where you will set targets.
• Task 2 - Consult SBTN basin threshold tool for local models

  Tasks 2 to 5 of Step 3 Freshwater are part of a multistage search process that will guide you in identifying an adequate hydrological model to set targets with—these tasks are part of a decision tree in the Freshwater technical guidance. This approach helps you to focus your efforts on finding local hydrological models only in top-priority basins and to move quickly to the use of global models to set targets in all other basins.

  Consult SBTN’s hydrological model database (currently under development) to check whether there are known local models and locally accepted thresholds for the basin where you are setting targets. Every time a company successfully validates targets using a local model and threshold, they will be added to the database (and indicated on the Target Dashboard), as will their geographic area of application (the river basin).

  If you have found a local model and threshold in the database, skip to Step 3b, Task 6, and use this model to set targets. Otherwise, move on to Task 3.

  Output(s) of this task:

  • If successful: choice of a local hydrological model and thresholds to set targets with.
• Task 3 - Consult national stakeholders

  Your search for local hydrological models continues with a national-level stakeholder consultation. SBTN’s Stakeholder Engagement Guidance can provide useful advice on how to conduct this consultation, as well as the local stakeholder consultation in Task 4. See the dedicated section in the Upcoming Technical Guidance chapter.

  Identify and reach out to experts and other stakeholders based in the basin’s country to ask them if they know of appropriate local hydrological models for your basin of interest. The stakeholders you may reach out to include national water authorities or ministries, and country offices of SBTN Freshwater Hub partner organizations. It is recommended that you first identify all basins in the country for which you will set targets, so that you only need to do this consultation once per country.

  SBTN has defined an appropriate local model as one that, among other criteria:

  • safeguards aquatic ecosystems (i.e., includes environmental flows);
  • accounts for major anthropological disturbances to local hydrology and nutrient levels;
  • accounts for existing water use rights and access needs; and
  • allows for the calculation of local thresholds if one has not been established for the basin.

  Save the records of your consultation process—you will need them as part of the target submission for validation. If the national stakeholders recommend a local model for the basin that meets the appropriateness criteria, skip to Task 6 and use this model to set targets. Otherwise, continue to Task 4 if the basin is in the top-priority group defined in Task 9 of Step 2c, or skip to Task 5 for all other basins.

  Output(s) of this task:

  • Records of the stakeholder consultation.
  • If successful: choice of a local hydrological model and thresholds to set targets with.
• Task 4 - Consult local stakeholders

  In Task 4, you will continue your search for local models with a local-level stakeholder consultation. Note that, for feasibility of the methods, this task is only required for the 10% of your basins that were defined as top priorities in Task 9 of Step 2c, or 10 basins if there are more than 100 basins in the target boundary.

  Identify and reach out to local experts and other stakeholders operating in your basin of interest. Appropriate stakeholders to consider in this phase of the consultation process include: water management agencies and basin authorities, governmental regulators, scientists and academics involved in the basin, local water-related NGOs or local chapters of international NGOs, local communities and/or Indigenous groups or their representatives, and local departments involved in water supply.

  Ask these stakeholders if any local hydrological model already exists for the basin, considering the same appropriateness criteria mentioned above. It is recommended that at least three different stakeholder types consider the model appropriate, but getting the green light from only one of them is required. If you find an appropriate model, skip to Task 6 and use this model to set targets.

  If no appropriate local models are known for the basin, continue the consultation process by asking these same stakeholders if they would consider the global models for water quantity and water quality, developed by Hogeboom (2020) and McDowell (2020) and referred to in Task 5, to be appropriate for use in the local conditions. This means that the basin (among other things):

  • does not have major inter-basin transfers, flow disruptions, or disturbances to nutrient flows that are not accounted for by the global model;
  • is not the site of major disputes related to water rights or water access;
  • does not have threatened species or ecosystems that are highly sensitive to nutrient or oxygen concentrations.

  If the stakeholders consider this global model appropriate for the local conditions, skip to Task 5 and use the global model to set targets.

  If you find that there are no appropriate local or global models to set targets with, you may conclude that it is not possible to set science-based targets in this basin. Save the records of your consultation process, because you will need them in the submission for validation.

  Looking ahead: You will need to check the SBTN hydrological database for updates every year because, since your last search, other companies may have found or developed local models for the basin. If you find that new local models are appropriate for your basin or have been added to the database, you will then need to set and resubmit targets.

  Output(s) of this task:

  • Records of the stakeholder consultation.
  • If successful: choice of a local hydrological model and thresholds to set targets with.
• Task 5 - Select global model (as appropriate)

  For other basins that fall outside “top priority” in your target boundary, you can use global models if local models are not identified through national stakeholder consultation. This means you would use the preselected hydrological model to set targets. This will also be the case for top-priority basins where, following Task 4, you were unable to find a local model but local stakeholders concluded that the global one was acceptable.

  The global model for water quantity, built from Hogeboom (2020) and the Water Footprint Assessment Tool, can be found here.

  The results from the global model for water quality targets by McDowell (2020) can be found here.

  Output(s) of this task:

  • Choice of the global hydrological model and thresholds to set targets with.