Restoring Ecosystem: United Breweries Limited

United Breweries Limited through its CSR Initiatives is working to address the critical task of restoring degraded ecosystem primarily through Integrated Natural Resource Management, water conservation and ecological restoration and regeneration projects across India. United Breweries Limited firmly believes in sustainable development, which is interpreted as growing their business in a socially and environmentally responsible way, while meeting the legitimate interests of the stakeholders.

The company and its employees are committed to the community it works with and the environment it extracts its resources from. UBL aspires to be a water positive organisation by 2025 and is constantly working towards achieving this. In addition to implementing Integrated Natural resource management, rainwater harvesting, watershed management and water conservation projects, UBL’s breweries are recycling the treated wastewater within the premises. The water conservation efforts are not limited to their breweries alone and UBL is making extensive efforts in generating awareness among the communities on the adoption of rainwater harvesting practices and incorporation of the necessary infrastructure.

Tushara Shankar, Head CSR, says “By the end of March 2018, UBL has created a recharge potential for 53 per cent of the water consumed in production and over 25,61,930 KL of water in the year 2017-18.”

UBL ensures that its CSR initiatives integrate social and environmental considerations, which applies to all their operations, is incorporated into the governance, management, business strategy and day-to-day decisions and actions. The key components of UBL-CSR work includes eco-restoration activities to improve productivity, Institutional Development and Capacity Building of Village Institutions, and Strengthening Livelihoods of Rural Poor Through a Better Local Governance.”

UBL’s water conservation and INRM efforts are have been implemented in Bihar, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Telangana.

Key Highlights of UBL’s work on Water Conservation and Natural Resource Management:

• Adopting a watershed approach in a programmatic manner for facilitating Integrated Natural Resource Management (INRM) plans for Village Institutions and Gram Panchayats.
• Improved planning, Monitoring and impact assessment by using GPS and GIS Maps.
• Integrate Rights and Securing Tenure arrangement with the governance of Natural Resources by Community.

The projects implemented by UBL CSR are addressing the problems of degradation in land, water, vegetation, productivity and most importantly the institutional fabric of villages. UBL aims for revival of institutional processes at the habitation/village/Panchayat level to establish systems of community governance over the natural resources of land and water and vegetation and to enable the communities to plan with the help of Gram Panchayat to bring in effective implementation of Water Conservation, Sustainable Livelihood through Natural resource management projects.

UBL-CSR works with various NGO Partners to implement their projects across India. The CSR initiatives are spread across different geographies and they have partnered with reputed NGOs for implementing them.

“Our Efforts is to work towards the stability of the entire ecosystem which needs working on physical and institutional dimensions on various categories of Water Bodies common lands, forestlands and farmlands – and water regimes for regeneration and restoration of the watersheds. Common and private lands are treated as one organic unit wherein work on the commons provides for stabilisation of the nutrient and water cycles thus improving the productivity of the private lands for agriculture and livestock.

“The project enables processes, which comprehensively address all layers of the institutional tier to improve governance at the village, Panchayat and Panchayat Samiti level. The interventions enable processes, which take into consideration the social inequalities present in a village context and tries to provide the disadvantaged sections a space in decision-making and governance.”

“The project interventions always guide and facilitate the principles and the derivative of the PRI guidelines and strengthen systems for effective implementation in the region,” says Tushara Shankar, Head CSR, United Breweries Limited.