Katherine Rowland writes in Nature.com, “More than one-fifth of the world’s water supplies go towards crops and commodities produced for export, a new study reports. As developed nations import water-intensive goods from overseas, they place pressure on finite resources in areas where water governance and conservation policies are often lacking.”
A University of Twente media release adds, “The average person consumes 4000 litres of water a day; this is including all the water needed for food and other products. However, consumption varies greatly from country to country. Many countries rely heavily on water supplies from other countries where water is in fact very scarce.”
And a New York Times blog highlights, “(The report) found that the United States, which has only 5 percent of the world’s population, is the third-largest consumer of freshwater, after the vastly more populated China and India. Per-capita water consumption in the United States was 2,842 cubic meters a year, or 100,364 cubic feet, in comparison with 1,089 cubic meters for China and 1,071 for India.”
Nature.com further explains, “Researchers from the Netherlands have quantified and mapped the global water footprint, highlighting how patterns in international commerce create disparities in water use. The new study, published (February 13) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, presents a spatial analysis of water consumption and pollution based on worldwide trade indicators, demographic data and water-usage statistics. Arjen Hoekstra, a water management analyst at the University of Twente in Enschede, Netherlands, and lead author of the study, says that water supplies follow the flow of goods around the world. Water consumption and pollution, he says, ‘are directly tied to the global economy’. …Dieter Gerten, a hydrologist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, suggests that countries tend to focus on national resources while relying increasingly on water-intensive imports, effectively offshoring their water consumption.”
Council of Canadians chairperson Maude Barlow says, “This is singly the most important report on water to come out in a decade. It links water destruction to global free trade in food and presents groundbreaking new numbers in terms of both per capita consumption and how much water goes to produce food.”
The 6-page ‘The water footprint of humanity‘ study can be read at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/02/06/1109936109.full.pdf+html.
The New York Times blog is at http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/tracking-how-the-world-guzzles-water/. The University of Twente media release can be read at http://www.utwente.nl/en/archive/2012/02/world_citizen_consumes_4000_litres_of_water_a_day.doc/. Rowland’s blog can be found at http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/02/world%E2%80%99s-water-footprint-linked-to-free-trade.html.
The Council of Canadians report ‘Leaky Exports: A portrait of the virtual water trade in Canada‘ by Maude Barlow, Meera Karunananthan and Nabeela Rahman can be read at http://canadians.org/water/documents/virtual-water-0511.pdf.
