What's Happening

By Christopher Richardson
Shareholder Advocacy Manager, Mercy Investment Services

April 14, 2025, Adrian, Michigan – World Water Day, recognized annually on March 22, is a global moment of reflection and action. It reminds us that water is not just a resource. It is the sacred lifeblood of our planet and a gift that connects all life. We must protect this gift not only for ourselves but also for future generations.

This year’s World Water Day theme, "Water for Peace," highlights how responsible stewardship of water resources can prevent conflict, promote equity, and restore harmony between communities and ecosystems.

The shareholder advocacy work supported by the Adrian Dominican Sisters Portfolio Advisory Board (PAB) is working to encourage companies to be more transparent and responsible in how they manage water use and avoid water contamination throughout their operations and in their global supply chains. 

Through programs such as the Ceres Valuing Water Finance Initiative, investors engage food, beverage, utility, and energy companies to ensure water stewardship is central to their business models. The risks associated with water – scarcity, contamination, extreme weather – aren’t just environmental. They are operational and financial, directly impacting supply chains, crop production, and worker and community well-being.

This year, we’ve expanded dialogues with companies like Ingredion, Campbell’s, and Coca-Cola to explore their progress and gaps in water stewardship.

Ingredion has made notable strides in managing its water risk. The company is conducting facility-level water risk assessments and has incorporated water reduction targets into its broader sustainability strategy. It is also integrating water stewardship into its sustainable agriculture goals for its global supply chain, particularly in high-water-use regions like Pakistan and the U.S.

Campbell’s, too, has highlighted water as a priority, although its progress is mixed. The company set a goal to reduce water usage by 20 percent by 2025 from a 2017 baseline but recently reported a 7 percent increase in use. Campbell’s has also mapped water risks at 100 percent of their manufacturing locations and is assessing climate and water risks across 24 priority raw materials. We will continue to press the company for concrete progress in managing its water use and water risk.

Coca-Cola has long prioritized water as a key risk for its business, setting a target in 2007 to replenish 100 percent of the water used in its drinks production by 2020, which it achieved five years early, in 2015. In 2024, the company announced an initiative with its African bottling companies to address water insecurity. 

The Equatorial Coca‑Cola Bottling Company set targets to improve its water-use efficiency by 20 percent and achieve 100 percent local water replenishment by 2030. Its bottling operations serve more than 160 million consumers, making these goals both impactful and essential. ECCBC is also working to align with The Coca-Cola Company’s overall "2030 Water Security Strategy" and collaborates with NGOs to improve water access and sanitation in vulnerable communities.

Our goal through shareholder advocacy is to support companies in becoming better stewards of water resources. By raising expectations, asking better questions, and pushing for more complete disclosures, we help companies prepare for a future where water will be a defining factor in resilience, cost, and reputation.

On this World Water Day, let us remember that water is not a commodity. It is a sacred thread that binds us all.

 

April 7, 2025, Adrian, Michigan – On behalf of Adrian Dominican Sisters and Associates, the General Council of the Congregation has issued the following statement, calling for building a beloved community among the American people in the face of the many dehumanizing executive actions and decisions of the Trump Administration.

Since President Trump took office more than two months ago, we have been deeply pained and alarmed by executive actions and orders that challenge our fundamental values and commitments as women of faith in the Catholic and Dominican traditions.

When we Adrian Dominican Sisters gathered in 2022 to set our direction for the next six years, we made a commitment to “build the beloved community in which everyone is cared for, absent of poverty, hunger and hate.” We called ourselves to the task of dismantling unjust systems “that oppress, dehumanize and deny the image of God in each of us and Earth community.” We committed ourselves to “acknowledge and repent of our complicity in the divisions prevalent in our Church and our world.” 

We felt called to make these commitments by the Gospel imperative to love one another as God loves us. We also felt called by the Dominican motto of Veritas – Truth – honored by all members of the world-wide Order of Preachers, founded in the 12th century by St. Dominic. 

In the past 11 weeks, we have witnessed a staggering array of orders issued by the White House and its agents with deeply troubling impacts that oppress and dehumanize persons, deny the image of God in each of us, and dangerously divide us as a nation and global community.  

We have witnessed these dehumanizing impacts in the harsh treatment of refugees and immigrants, some of whom were arrested and, without due process, deported to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. We have witnessed them in the disturbing termination of visas, without notice, of law-abiding international students – some of whom, shockingly, were apprehended by masked agents, whisked away in unmarked vehicles, and flown to Louisiana to be held in detention centers. 

We have witnessed dehumanizing impacts in the erasure from museums, national parks and government websites of our nation’s history of racism – a shameful history we had finally begun to acknowledge as truth. We similarly witnessed it in the erasure of unknown and well-known stories highlighting the heroism and ingenuity of Black, Native American, Hispanic, LGBTQ+ and other historically marginalized Americans, including women. “Across the federal government,” NPR reports, “agencies have been scrubbing photographic and written references about women, people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community from their websites.” Transgender and non-binary persons have “faced the most consistent removal from government websites,” according to NPR. Transgender persons, made in the image of God like all human beings, are the explicit targets of several dehumanizing executive orders, including one barring them from military service. 

We have witnessed dehumanization in the blunt firing, without cause, of more than 24,000 workers in 18 federal agencies, according to CBS News, some with outstanding performance evaluations. These firings are creating immediate hardships for laid-off federal workers and their families. 

The firings will also soon impact the wellbeing of ordinary Americans served daily – in visible and invisible ways – by the wide range of critical services government workers provide. These include programs that prevent the spread of infectious diseases; ensure the safety of our food and drugs; respond to natural disasters; uphold standards of education and the availability of libraries, museums, the arts and sciences; ensure consumer protection; offer food and shelter for those in need and Meals on Wheels for elders; provide mental health care; protect our water, air, fish and wildlife habitats; and care for veterans and first responders, among many other essential services. 

We are witnessing the dehumanizing impact of White House orders in the alarming dismantling of the Social Security Administration, the nation’s largest government program. The draconian workforce reductions, closure of offices, and new ID demands on beneficiaries pose a clear and present danger to the health and wellbeing of millions of elderly Americans who have worked all their lives, paid into the system, and now rely on social security checks to cover their basic housing and food needs.

We are witnessing division and discord – as well as dangerous economic instability – in the stunning levy, without rationale, of tariffs on nations across the world. Among its
disturbing impacts, the U.S. tariffs are bringing an end to a decades-long global era of “alliances rooted in trust and mutual respect” with a “free and open exchange of goods,” as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney remarked. 

All of these and other deeply concerning White House actions run counter to our commitments as Dominican women of faith to build a beloved community – and are undermining the democratic values and ideals we hold dear as U.S. citizens.

We call on members of Congress to exercise their Constitutional authority to uphold the programs, agencies and departments that they, our elected leaders, enacted on behalf of and for the good of the American people. If members of Congress wish to upend them, the House and Senate have clear legislative means to do so in ways that comport with our nation’s ideal of a government of, by and for the people.  

We pray that the goodwill characteristic of the American people of all faith traditions will call us to kinder, more compassionate, respectful, and generous ways of being good caring neighbors to one another – and to all the other beautifully diverse peoples of the world’s nations, neighbors in our common Earth home.

 

Members of the Adrian Dominican Sisters General Council are Sisters Elise D. García, OP, Prioress; Bibiana “Bless” Colasito, OP, and Frances Nadolny, OP, General Councilors; Lorraine Réaume, OP, Vicaress and General Councilor; and Corinne Sanders, OP, General Councilor.