Life Cycle Assessment and Water Footprint Assessment in Support of Achieving the SDGs
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Engineering and Science".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 April 2023) | Viewed by 9891
Special Issue Editors
Interests: water footprint; sustainability; life cycle assessment; environmental impacts
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
There is increasing global concern related to water scarcity issues; in fact, global freshwater use has been listed as one of the nine planetary boundaries. Earth’s freshwater resources have been identified as dangerously subjected to increasing pressure in the form of consumptive water use and pollution. Water is crucial for food production, sanitation and hygiene; therefore, the sustainable use of this resource is essential. Thus, a deep understanding of the impacts on water use enhances the exploration of more suitable avenues for sustainable development.
Hoekstra and Hung, starting from the original idea of virtual water introduced by Tony Allan in the early 1990s, have developed a water footprint concept relatively recently, in 2002. In 2011, the Water Footprint Network released a methodology based on a volumetric approach. In recent years, the LCA community has also fostered a methodological development to address the water impact, in which the water footprint is defined as “metric(s) that quantifies the potential environmental impacts related to water”.
Actually, the scientific community is debating the two aforementioned indicators which are often indicated with the same name of the water footprint to describe a different water accounting approach. Given the urgent call for action according to United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), new policy proposals on water management and possible solutions for the SDGs implementation able to promote sustainable water use, are a special area of interest.
This Special Issue intends to cover the state-of-the-art and recent progress in the application of the different water indicator methodologies in the sustainability assessment of products and services. Qualitative and quantitative studies addressing the water impacts of human activities will be considered for publication, including field experiments, case studies, theoretical, and literature review studies. Systems thinking and holistic approaches combining the environmental, economic, and social dimension of sustainability are encouraged, e.g., providing evidence from life cycle sustainability assessment.
This Special Issue is in memory of Tony Allan. He has inspired the scientific community to further find a fair sustainable solution for water usage. He shan’t be forgotten!
Dr. Lucrezia Lamastra
Dr. Diego Voccia
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- water footprint
- water impact
- water stress
- environmental indicators
- SDGs
- life cycle assessment
- life cycle thinking
- agricultural and food system sustainability
- sustainable production and consumption
- environmental impacts
- sustainable transitions
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