First of all, a classification of used water is needed. One of the most beneficial contributions of the water footprint is the way of calculating it, as it allows a new vision of the distribution of water resources all around the world. It is the volume of freshwater used by mankind to live. Hoekstra’s team established that each individual had an annual water footprint of 1,385 cubic meters, that is, the volume of half an Olympic swimming pool each, which is equivalent today to a global water footprint of 7.45 trillion cubic meters annually. The water footprint links therefore end consumers, manufacturing companies and traders. Hoekstra went one step beyond with the water footprint, and considered in his calculations the whole amount of water used in the supply chain of a product this includes not only the amount of water added to the product itself, but also the water that has been polluted or dumped into a different basin or into the sea or even the water evaporated in all processes. Allen defined virtual water as the total volume of water used directly or indirectly to manufacture a specific product. Back then, ecologists, environmentalists and geographers used the “virtual water” concept in their calculations, which had been developed by the British geographer John Anthony Allan in 1993, after studying the scarcity of water in the Middle East. The water footprint concept was created in 2002 by the Dutch national Arjen Ysbert Hoekstra, a professor at the University of Twente. This is what the study on the “water footprint” reveals: any production process or provided service implies an expenditure of water, a factor that was fairly unknown one decade ago and that provides an essential tool for the sustainable development of mankind. But it is more difficult to imagine that this expenditure depends on where, when and how the crops are grown and on who buys and consumes the products. It is easy to imagine that agricultural products consume water: rainwater and humidity from the atmosphere, irrigation water and groundwater.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |