Several European pension funds are part of an investor group that has asked a record number of companies to disclose their water management data, as part of the newly launched annual Non-Disclosure Campaign operated by CDP.

This year’s campaign has seen investors contact 1,029 companies to disclose their water management data, more than double last year's campaign when 463 companies were contacted.

Additionally, there has been a 26 per cent increase in the number of companies contacted by investors to disclose data on climate aspects such as water management, carbon footprint and responsible forestry, reaching a record high of 1,998 companies.

Furthermore, 276 international investors, totalling DKK 14,600bn under management, are participating in this year’s Non-Disclosure Campaign.

In particular, the investors are focused on companies in the technology sector due to their high water consumption in connection with data centres and computer chip manufacturing.

According to CDP, at the current rate, it is suggested that the world could face a 40 per cent shortage of fresh water by 2030, with corporate water-related risks estimated to amount to at least DKK 1,600bn.

CDP findings also found that companies contacted by investors in last year’s campaign were more than twice as likely to disclose the requested data when compared to a control group of 4,421 non-participating companies.

The pension funds and pension providers involved include Sampension, AP Pension, Church Pension Fund Finland, Elo Mutual Pension Insurance Company, Établissement de Retraite Additionnelle de la Fonction Publique, Fonds de Reserve pour les Retraites, Greater Manchester Pension Fund, Industriens Pension and Keva.

Others include: North East Scotland Pension Fund, Northern Ireland Local Government Officers’ Superannuation Committee, P+, Pension Protection Fund, PGGM Investments, PKA, Strathclyde Pension Fund, TfL Pension Fund, The State Pension Fund of Finland, Velliv, Veritas Pension Insurance Company Ltd, Vivest and West Yorkshire Pension Fund.

"The world's water resources are under pressure due to increasing climate change and our unsustainable consumption. This is deeply worrying, and we all have a responsibility to help reverse the trend,” Sampension head of ESG, Jacob Ehlerth Jørgensen, commented on the campaign.

“Of course, this also applies to us as investors, where companies' water management represents an investment risk. In recent years, we have therefore had a significant and increasing focus on pushing companies in a more responsible direction in this area, and our participation in this initiative is an extension of this.”

Jørgensen explained that the collaboration between investors has proved “effective” in providing better access to companies' environmental and climate-related data and said a “good” example of that, in many cases, is when it can make a difference when, together with responsible investors, it engages with companies to get them to change their behaviour.

However, he warned that change doesn’t happen “overnight” and said it takes “patience and persistence” to influence companies through active ownership as an investor.

“And that also applies to this initiative, where we have seen, for example, that a company only published the requested data last year after having been a target of the campaign since the start in 2017," Jørgensen added.

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