Socioeconomic Drivers of Global Blue Water Use

Abstract

The recent intensification of international trade has led to a growing disconnection between consumer demand for goods and services and the water resources that support them. The important role of household demands on the exploitation of distant freshwater resources is widely recognized, yet the different socioeconomic drivers underlying the trends in domestic and foreign water use remain poorly quantified. In this work, the main mechanisms governing the exploitation of domestic and foreign freshwater resources are quantified by undertaking a structural decomposition analysis over the period 1994–2010 in 186 countries. Our results show that growth in affluence has been the main determinant of rising water consumption trends worldwide. There are indications that consumers in developed countries tend to increase their affluence by intensifying the use of foreign water resources. Conversely, affluence growth in developing regions seems to rely on the exploitation of local water resources revealing a significant imbalance among economies. The growth of affluence and population has been only partially offset by improvements in the intensity of blue water use by producers and, to a lesser extent, by changes in the interdependences among sectors.

Living at the Water’s Edge: A World-Wide Econometric Panel Estimation of Arable Water Footprint Drivers

“…The WF, defined as the ratio between evapotranspiration (in m 3 per hectare) and crop yield (in ton per hectare), is expected to change over time, and, as such, was modified to be time-variant. To perform this task, an approach validated by Tuninetti et al [27] and adopted by other relevant studies, e.g., [6,10,11,28], was applied. This approach assumes that evapotranspiration remains stable over time and WF changes are only driven by yield variations, so yearly country-specific WFs for each product can be obtained as…”

“…Interest in this intensity measure of water usage has contributed to a growing body of empirical academic literature. A number of studies analyse the drivers of water use, e.g., [6], and virtual water trade, e.g., [7][8][9][10][11]. Another strand of the literature examines climate change and its concomitant impact on water scarcity, e.g., [12,13], or the repercussions of changing diets in relieving water resource pressures, e.g., [14][15][16].…”

Environmental-social-economic footprints of consumption and trade in the Asia-Pacific region

“…A key development is the consumption-based environmental footprint accounting that links regional consumption to natural resource exploitation and the environmental impacts both within and outside of the region. Existing footprint studies vary in focal indicators: most of them focused on a single indicator (e.g., blue water 18 , energy 19 , carbon 20 , PM 2.5 21 , land 22 , labor 23 , and material extraction 24 , 25 ), and a few examined multiple-indicators consistently (e.g., carbon-land-water 26 and carbon-land-water-material 27 ). They also differ in temporal coverage, with most studies being based on a 1-year snapshot 28 , 29 , and a few investigated the time trends 24 , 30 .…”

Dynamic Driving Forces of India's Emissions From Production and Consumption Perspectives

“…Moreover, China is the main target for conducting investigations at a provincial level due to its perfect data set (Feng et al, 2012; Li, Zhou, et al, 2018; Meng, Zhang, et al, 2018). In addition, some studies deliver detailed analysis for emission changes embodied in domestic consumption and trade (Lan et al, 2016; Malik, Lan, & Lenzen, 2016; Soligno et al, 2019), as well as final and intermediate products (Meng, Zhang, et al, 2018). Furthermore, there are many literatures calculate the effects of factors on emission changes in industry level by using the index decomposition analysis (IDA) (Fan & Lei, 2016; Li et al, 2017; Tian et al, 2011).…”

“…Furthermore, there are many literatures calculate the effects of factors on emission changes in industry level by using the index decomposition analysis (IDA) (Fan & Lei, 2016; Li et al, 2017; Tian et al, 2011). Meanwhile, some literatures quantify the impacts of drivers on changes of water (Soligno et al, 2019; Yang et al, 2016), energy (Lan et al, 2016; Su & Ang, 2017) and air pollutants (Deng et al, 2016; Meng et al, 2016, 2019).…”