Water footprints of nations: Water use by people as a function of their consumption pattern

Abstract

The water footprint shows the extent of water use in relation to consumption of people. The water footprint of a country is defined as the volume of water needed for the production of the goods and services consumed by the inhabitants of the country. The internal water footprint is the volume of water used from domestic water resources; the external water footprint is the volume of water used in other countries to produce goods and services imported and consumed by the inhabitants of the country. The study calculates the water footprint for each nation of the world for the period 1997-2001. The USA appears to have an average water footprint of 2480 m 3 /cap/yr, while China has an average footprint of 700 m 3 /cap/yr. The global average water footprint is 1240 m 3 /cap/yr. The four major direct factors determining the water footprint of a country are: volume of consumption (related to the gross national income); consumption pattern (e.g. high versus low meat consumption); climate (growth conditions); and agricultural practice (water use efficiency).

Strategic importance of green water in international crop trade

“…Although the chosen crops do not have the highest embedded water contents, they do use the most water globally after rice (rice 21 per cent, wheat 12, maize 9 and soybean 4) (Hoekstra and Chapagain, 2007b;. Major exporting countries were chosen for the study: USA, Argentina and Canada contributing 69 per cent to the global exported maize, 63 per cent to soybeans and, together with Australia, 49 per cent to wheat ( Table 1).…”

“…The virtual-water content of a product is calculated using the methodology developed by Hoekstra and Hung (2002;2005) and Hoekstra and Chapagain (2007b;. The virtual-water content of primary crops (m 3 /ton) has been calculated as the ratio of the volume of water used during the entire period of crop growth (crop water requirement, m 3 /ha) to the corresponding crop yield (ton/ha) in the producing country.…”

Optimizing diet and pasture management to improve sustainability of U.S. beef production

“…This value was greater than some previous estimates of beef water use in the U.S. or Australia (Table 8; Capper, 2011Capper, , 2012Ridoutt et al, 2011) likely because of irrigated pasture use. A different water foot printing methodology estimated substantially more water use attributable to beef (Hoekstra and Chapagain, 2007) because different water sources (i.e. rainwater) were considered by Hoekstra and 6 Up f ;p Intake of particular animal groups was constrained to ensure practical diets.…”

An evaluation of the Stormwater Footprint Calculator and the Hydrological Footprint Residence for communicating about sustainability in stormwater management

“…Two footprints have been developed to evaluate water-use behaviors and practices. Hoekstra & Chapagain (2007) define the "water footprint" as the total volume of freshwater used to produce the goods consumed in a country or a region. The "water-supply footprint" calculates the catchment area that generates the water supply upstream of a community to estimate the amount of water that can be sustainably allocated for human demands (Stoeglehner et al 2011).…”