Why Suntory’s sustainability leader also heads risk management

For Japanese-owned Suntory Global Spirits, access to fresh water is mission-critical. 

It’s among the $5 billion beverage company’s most significant business risks, one reason that its sustainability leader also heads the enterprise risk management committee spearheading its water strategy. Suntory even created a new company in April 2025, called Water Scape, to help businesses restore and secure their own water supplies.

“Even though we say it tongue in cheek, ‘No water, no whiskey’ is really a business imperative for us,” said Kim Marotta, chief environmental risk officer and head of enterprise risk management, during a Climate Pioneers interview during GreenBiz 26. “It’s really a main ingredient in our products. It also waters our crops, and it flows through every part of the distillation process. So when you look at a long-term resilience strategy, you have to look at the long-term availability of water.”

Marotta was named to head enterprise risk in January 2025. She also blended sustainability and risk management in her previous role at Molson Coors, and thinks that every sustainability leader should bring that mindset to discussions with executive leadership regardless of whether or not it’s part of their title.

Mission: long-term resilience

Suntory’s enterprise risk committee includes the CEO and top executives for human resources, supply chain, finance, legal, brand management, technology and digital operations. Managing water is viewed as a risk on par with managing supply chain disruptions, geopolitical tensions or digital transformation.

“We’re looking at water, we’re looking at soil health, we’re looking at packaging, at carbon, at climate — all the lists that we’re really focused on and managing for the long term,” she said. “What enterprise risk management has given me is the opportunity to see the big picture. Instead of just having environmental risks, they’re business risks.”

Lever: incentives and KPIs

Suntory, headquartered in New York City, is the privately held company behind Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark bourbons and El Tesoro tequila. Among its water-related commitments is a pledge to cut the amount of water used per unit of product in half by 2030 — a goal it has already surpassed — and a commitment to replenish more than 100 percent of the water it uses at company operations in water-stressed regions. So far, it has replenished about 15 percent.

Meeting Suntory’s operational water goal required deep engagement with the company’s distillery teams, and those metrics are part of key performance indicators and incentives. 

“We actually have water as our short-term bonus,” Marotta told me in a separate conversation about Suntory’s water goals. “It’s the people within the distilleries, within this entire business, that drive against that.”

Key enabler: artificial intelligence

Suntory uses internally developed software to gather data from spreadsheets and systems across the company, along with external reports on economic and climate insights from around the world. That information helps leadership anticipate challenges and address concerns proactively. It is updated and shared monthly, along with analysis.

“We often say to our leadership team, we’re not going to stop the risk from coming, but if we can help mitigate and build responses that make us more resilient, that’s what we can do,” she said.

Marotta uses the AI data to prioritize Suntory’s risks into three tiers, which receive different levels of attention:

• Tier 1 refers to water and other threats that are already having an impact and that must be actively managed
• Tier 2 describes the next layer of concern, which also needs immediate attention to maintain the status quo. One example is Suntory’s access to white oak trees for the barrels used to age whiskey.
• Tier 3 includes issues that the company will monitor so that they don’t escalate.

By taking a similar approach, corporate sustainability teams can change their own conversations about environmental issues with business leaders across their organizations. 

“You are all enterprise risk managers,” she said, “you probably just don’t know it yet.”