Germany's global water consumption under consideration of the local safe operating spaces of watersheds worldwide

Bunsen, Jonas; Berger, Markus; Ward, Hauke; Finkbeiner, Matthias

doi:10.1016/j.clrc.2021.100034

Cited by 4 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…To capture these dynamics, we introduce local level SOS, which aims to capture regional differences in the water availability, enhancing recent work (e.g. Motoshita et al 2020, Bjørn et al 2020a, Bunsen et al 2021b). We express the SOS (including and excluding HWC) in relative terms as follows: The rationale for including and excluding HWC from the SOS definition is based on the idea that the safety of a watershed can be determined before and after human intervention.…”

Section: Deriving Safe Operating Space At the Local (Watershed) Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

A planetary boundary-based method to assess freshwater use at the global and local scales

Kulionis

Pfister

2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Many studies have attempted to evaluate the transgression of the water planetary boundary at sub-global levels. Typically, this has been done by assessing water consumption in a country/city or sector against the assigned share of the global limit. Such an approach enables to evaluate of whether a sub-global unit operates within the safe limits, however, it ignores spatial water availability and thus may provide an incomplete image of water-related environmental impacts. This study demonstrates how the water planetary boundary concept can be integrated within the Environmentally Extended Multi-Region Input-Output (EEMRIO) framework to assess global and local (watershed level) level boundaries. Our results demonstrate that even though most countries operate within globally safe limits, for several countries, a large share of water comes from watersheds that have reached unsafe water consumption levels. This highlights the importance of combining local and global level assessments to design more accurate and tailored policy responses targeting specific watersheds that are most at risk.

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Section: Deriving Safe Operating Space At the Local (Watershed) Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

A planetary boundary-based method to assess freshwater use at the global and local scales

Kulionis

Pfister

2022

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…One of the most-stressed components of the earth system is the hydrosphere, which includes both its fresh surface waters and groundwaters. In many regions of the world, these resources are overexploited by human activities, often to the point of exceeding local sustainability thresholds [8][9][10][11][12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In order to explore the relationship between water consumption and its impacts and economic production and consumption, numerous researchers have turned to environmentally extended multi-regional input-output analysis (referred to as input-output analysis henceforth), e.g., Ono [23], Lutter et al [24], Ridoutt et al [25], Lenzen et al [26], Lenzen [27] and Bunsen et al [12]. Input-output analysis is a method primarily for macroeconomic analyses.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, satellite accounts of water consumption and its impacts are typically compiled using national crop production data, national average water consumption values per crop produced and national average characterisation factors, e.g., Lenzen et al [26], Lutter et al [24] and Bunsen et al [12]. However, unlike the impacts of greenhouse gases, which are largely the same regardless of where they are emitted, water-related assessments must take into account regional aspects, as the impacts of water consumption unfold in a highly regional context [11,37,38].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Input–Output Global Hybrid Analysis of Agricultural Primary Production (IO-GHAAPP) Database

2023

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In many regions of the world, water consumption exceeds the limits of sustainable water use. A commonly used method to examine the relationship between global water consumption and production is input–output analysis. However, between approximately 70% and 90% of freshwater consumption occurs in agricultural primary production, which is often represented by only a small percentage of the total number of sectors in input–output databases. As a result, water-related assessments based on input–output analysis are limited in their accuracy and substance. In addition, the assessment of the impact of water consumption is usually carried out at the national level, which can further contribute to the imprecision of the results. Therefore, the primary objective of this work was to develop an approach to better assess water use and its impacts in input–output analysis. In order to achieve this objective, a novel approach was adopted by integrating a global spatial model of agricultural primary production (MapSPAM) into an existing input–output database via prorating. In addition, the utilisation of MapSPAM allowed the calculation of water environmental extensions with unprecedented accuracy. The resulting Input–Output Global Hybrid Analysis of Agricultural Primary Production (IO-GHAAPP) approach includes (1) a novel input–output database and (2) novel environmental extensions for freshwater consumption and scarcity. The IO-GHAAPP database consists of 150 categories and 164 regions, resulting in a total of 24,600 region–category combinations. Forty-two of the categories are dedicated to agricultural primary production (28%). In comparison, the source input–output data consist of 120 categories and 164 regions, resulting in a total of 19,680 region–category combinations, of which 14 are dedicated to agricultural primary production (12%). The Python code and IO-GHAAPP database are openly available via Zenodo. The IO-GHAAPP approach is presented in a comparative analysis of agricultural primary production, along with the associated water consumption and water footprint, at both the global level and for the United States and India. Both countries are among the most important in the world in terms of agricultural primary production as well as associated water consumption and water scarcity. Furthermore, the IO-GHAAPP approach is applied in a simple case study of Germany, which stands in contrast as one of the largest importers of agricultural primary production on a global scale. The results show that the IO-GHAAPP approach adds a valuable layer of information to the disaggregated input–output data, allowing crop-specific analyses to be carried out that would otherwise not be possible, e.g., for specific leguminous or beverage crops. The results are relevant to practitioners of input–output analysis who are concerned with the impacts of agricultural primary production and who need highly resolved data, as well as to policy-makers who rely on such studies. The demonstrated IO-GHAAPP approach could be extended to other externalities relevant to agricultural primary production, such as land use, soil degradation or pollution.

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“…Input-output analysis has been applied in countless sustainability-related studies e.g., on cities [13][14][15][16][17][18], organisations [19,20], economic sectors [21,22], nations [23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30], local impacts of global trade [26,31,32] and other topics. The externalities analysed using inputoutput analyses are versatile, and include carbon emissions [17,18,33], biodiversity [34], land use [35,36], water consumption [24,37], human exploitation [38] and other indicators.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Introductory Review of Input-Output Analysis in Sustainability Sciences Including Potential Implications of Aggregation

Bunsen

Finkbeiner

2022

Sustainability

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Input-output analysis has become a widely established method in sustainability sciences. It is primarily used in macroeconomic footprint analyses for allocating an economy’s externalities among the agents in that economy based on the agents’ input-output interdependencies. However, databases for input-output analyses are commonly compiled by aggregating data. Aggregation of input-output data inevitably leads to a loss of information and in some instances can lead to misinformed decision-making. The goal of this paper is to provide a simple hands-on numerical introduction to input-output analysis including the potential implications of data aggregation in an original manner. First, the calculation of production-based and consumption-based inventories is introduced based on a dummy 2 × 2 input-output table. Next, the inventories of the 2 × 2 input-output table are compared with the production-based and consumption-based inventories of a corresponding non-aggregated 4 × 4 input-output table. A comparison of the inventories of both dummy input-output tables allows for an exemplary demonstration of inaccurate allocation as a result of data aggregation and to conclude on potential implications for decision-making. Overall, this work offers a succinct and numerically substantiated introductory review of input-output analysis for practitioners in sustainability sciences including the potential implications of aggregation of input-output data. Its simplistic approach sets this work apart from other publications on aggregation in input-output analysis that are founded in economics or econometrics.

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Germany's global water consumption under consideration of the local safe operating spaces of watersheds worldwide

Cited by 4 publications

References 38 publications

A planetary boundary-based method to assess freshwater use at the global and local scales

A planetary boundary-based method to assess freshwater use at the global and local scales

Input–Output Global Hybrid Analysis of Agricultural Primary Production (IO-GHAAPP) Database

An Introductory Review of Input-Output Analysis in Sustainability Sciences Including Potential Implications of Aggregation

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