The Industry We Want to Inherit: Designing Systems Worth Passing Forward

The Inheritance of Progress: What Are We Choosing to Leave Behind?

Imagine inheriting a world built by people you have never met. Its roads, industries, institutions and technologies were conceived long before your arrival. Some make life easier; others leave behind problems that take generations to resolve. The rivers that once sustained communities may now carry industrial pollutants.

The resources that enabled prosperity may have been consumed faster than nature could replenish them. And the systems designed to support economic advancement may have overlooked the very conditions that make life possible.

Every Generation Inherits a Decision

This is the paradox of progress: every generation benefits from the ingenuity of the one before it, but also inherits the consequences of its choices. The industrial revolution demonstrated how profoundly human enterprise could transform the world. The question for contemporary industry is whether it can retain that capacity for transformation while changing the principles that guide it.

What we choose to build today will become the starting point for somebody else's tomorrow. Industrial responsibility, therefore, must extend beyond immediate profitability towards the enduring quality of the systems we leave operational.

When Responsibility Becomes Institutional

This understanding is gradually finding expression in the institutions that shape global economic activity. The Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), established in 2017 by central banks and financial supervisors, works to incorporate climate and nature-related risks into financial stability assessments, supervisory practices and scenario analysis. Its premise is significant: environmental disruption can become financial disruption, and decisions made today influence the resilience of economies tomorrow.

The United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative's Principles for Responsible Banking (PRB), launched in 2019, encourage banks to align their strategies, portfolios and transactions with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Paris Agreement. Their six principles address alignment, impact and target-setting, clients and customers, stakeholders, governance and culture, and transparency and accountability.

Similarly, the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), launched in 2006 with United Nations support, guide institutional investors and asset managers in incorporating environmental, social and governance considerations into investment decisions, active ownership, disclosure and accountability.

These frameworks are not interchangeable. They address different responsibilities within the financial system. Yet, together, they demonstrate an important evolution: responsibility must influence where money flows, what businesses finance and which economic models receive long-term support.

The Responsibility Beyond Finance

The same principle extends to manufacturers, infrastructure developers, technology providers and multinational enterprises. The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct provide recommendations covering human rights, labour, environmental protection, disclosure and supply-chain due diligence.

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) encourages organisations to assess their dependencies, impacts, risks and opportunities relating to nature. What connects these approaches is the recognition that an organisation's responsibilities do not end at its immediate operational boundaries.

They extend into the systems it influences and the consequences it creates.

The Resource We Cannot Afford to Inherit Depleted: Water and Industrial Responsibility

If the responsibility of industry is to leave behind systems capable of sustaining future prosperity, water is where that responsibility becomes particularly tangible.

It is an essential input into manufacturing, energy, agriculture and public infrastructure. Yet, its availability is increasingly challenged by competing demands, pollution and inadequate management.

According to UNESCO's United Nations World Water Development Report 2024, agriculture accounts for approximately 70% of global freshwater withdrawals, industry for just under 20%, and domestic use for around 12%. Global freshwater demand has increased by just under 1% annually since the 1980s. Roughly half the world's population experiences severe water scarcity during at least part of the year.

When the Foundations of Progress Come Under Pressure

The pollution challenge is equally pressing. The 2024 WHO and UN-Habitat assessment found that, among 22 countries reporting industrial wastewater data, representing just 8% of the global population, only 38% of industrial wastewater was treated and 27% safely treated. The limited coverage also exposes a fundamental weakness in global water governance: insufficient monitoring makes accountability difficult.

ndia presents a closer illustration. A December 2023 Ministry of Jal Shakti assessment reported that, of 67,988 industries requiring Effluent Treatment Plants (ETPs), 66,053 had functional facilities, while 1,935 were operating without them. The country's 201 operational Common Effluent Treatment Plants (CETPs) had a combined design capacity of 1,917 million litres per day (MLD), against an operational capacity of 1,137 MLD.

The difference between installed infrastructure and actual operational capacity matters. A treatment plant on paper cannot guarantee a cleaner river. The effectiveness of a system must be measured by what it delivers.

The Economics of an Insecure Water Future

The implications extend beyond environmental degradation. A December 2025 Bank for International Settlements working paper, analysing 169 countries between 1990 and 2020, found that greater water scarcity was associated with lower real GDP growth and investment, and higher inflation. A one-standard-deviation increase in water scarcity was associated with a 0.12–0.16% reduction in output growth and a 0.39–0.42% reduction in fixed investment growth. Water-use efficiency, conversely, was associated with stronger economic growth and lower inflation.

Meanwhile, the United Nations' 2025 SDG Report estimated that 2.2 billion people lacked safely managed drinking water in 2024. Only 56% of domestic wastewater was safely treated in that year.

These numbers reveal that water insecurity is simultaneously an environmental, economic and social concern. Its consequences are borne by communities, businesses, ecosystems and generations that have little influence over today's resource decisions.

Three Pillars, One Interconnected Responsibility

A meaningful industrial water strategy must therefore connect all three pillars of sustainability. Environmental responsibility requires efficient withdrawal, pollution prevention, treatment, recycling and ecological restoration. Social responsibility demands equitable access to safe drinking water, sanitation and meaningful community participation.

Economic responsibility requires water-efficient processes, resilient supply chains, investment in treatment infrastructure and long-term operational security.

These pillars cannot operate independently. An industry that improves its efficiency while compromising community access has not achieved sustainable progress. Nor has a business secured long-term economic resilience if its production depends on an increasingly depleted resource.

It is whether that understanding has entered the decisions through which industries operate. Responsible banking must influence lending. Responsible investment must influence ownership. Responsible manufacturing must influence procurement, production and product design. Nature-related assessments must inform infrastructure and expansion.

For water, implementation begins with comprehensive accounting of withdrawal, consumption, discharge and reuse. It requires process optimisation, rainwater harvesting, wastewater treatment, recycling and water-risk assessments across facilities and supply chains.

Organisations must also consider the catchments and communities on which their operations depend. These are not isolated environmental interventions; they are components of industrial resilience.

The Activist Company: Responsibility That Moves Beyond Intention

At WAE, this is where the philosophy of The Activist Company becomes particularly relevant. An activist enterprise does not simply recognise that established practices need improvement. It challenges the inefficiencies, resource-intensive behaviours and outdated systems that have made environmental compromise an accepted part of business.

This requires bringing advocacy together with engineering, technology and design to create commercially viable alternatives. In water, that means re-examining how drinking water is purified, accessed and consumed; developing responsible infrastructure; improving resource efficiency; and challenging the dependence on disposable bottled-water systems.

The objective is not simply to introduce another product into an existing system. It is to question whether that system needs to exist in its current form at all.

A Legacy Measured in Possibilities

Ultimately, the industry we want future generations to inherit is one that gives them more possibilities, not fewer. It should leave behind functioning infrastructure, cleaner water systems, responsible institutions and technologies that enable prosperity without exhausting its foundations.

The past has already shown us what happens when progress is pursued without sufficient consideration of its consequences. The future asks something more demanding: that businesses translate what they know into what they do, and accept responsibility for the world their decisions help create.

There is a particular kind of wisdom in building something that outlives its creator. For industry, that wisdom lies in recognising that the resources it uses, the systems it designs and the opportunities it creates do not belong exclusively to the present.

The greatest inheritance industry can leave behind is not a finished world, but a world in which future generations still have the resources, freedom and opportunity to shape their own.

Bibliography

• NGFS – https://www.ngfs.net/en/about-us/origin-and-purpose
• UNEP FI, Principles for Responsible Banking – https://www.unepfi.org/banking/more-about-the-principles/
• Principles for Responsible Investment – https://www.unpri.org/
• WHO and UN-Habitat, Progress on Domestic and Industrial Wastewater Treatment (2024) – https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240099081
• Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of India (18 December 2023) – https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1987660
• Bank for International Settlements, The Economics of Water Scarcity (9 December 2025) – https://www.bis.org/publications/working-paper-1314-economics-water-scarcity
• United Nations, The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2025, Goal 6 – https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2025/Goal-06
• Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures – https://tnfd.global/recommendations/
• OECD, Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct (2023) – https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/oecd-guidelines-for-multinational-enterprises-on-responsible-business-conduct_81f92357-en.html