Building on information required to apply the AWS Standard framework, this guide helps practitioners apply the steps outlined in the VWBA method to identify and implement activities, measure progress, and make claims toward meeting a water replenishment target in ways that address current and future shared water challenges in local catchments. This guide draws on VWBA to recommend the volumetric water benefit (VWB) as a common metric to measure the outputs of water stewardship activities and track progress in a consistent way across activities, markets, geographies, and businesses.

This guide follows the three steps of the VWBA method, provides guidance for how to implement each step, and makes recommendations for who should review, validate, and communicate replenishment achievements and progress toward a target.

For each step, the guide provides:

• Indication if the information is relevant to a site or to a specific water stewardship activity;
• Prerequisites to completing the step.
• Decision trees to help identify action items and know when to move to the next step; and
• Required output from each step.