The aim of this Special Issue is to explore water-related risks and challenges, as well as water management opportunities, in the modern globalised production landscape from an end-to-end supply chain perspective. As environmentally sensitive consume...
Fuel ethanol is considered to be a clean alternative fuel to meet increasing energy demands and mitigate environmental pollution. Faced with challenges in terms of energy security and environmental pollution, China is vigorously developing fuel ethan...
Water resources conservation corresponding to urban growth is an increasing challenge for European policy makers. Water footprint (WF) is one of the methods to address this challenge. The objective of this study was to develop a simplified model to a...
Common problems when carrying out water footprint (WF) assessments are obtaining specific primary data, dealing with the complexity of its computation, and the availability of quality data. In a supply chain context, inconsistencies are even more exa...
Agricultural production is responsible for most of the withdrawal of water volume. There has been increasing the pressure on stakeholders to adapt water usage behavior and manage water resources. In this context, water footprint management (WFM) prac...
Water management initiatives are implemented under a concept called water footprint management (WF management). Different initiatives and pressures might have a positive influence on the implementation of WF management, such as the adoption of corpor...
This study investigates business engagement in sustainable water management, focusing on water footprint accounting as a tool to account for water use in food supply chains. An explorative analysis is conducted on the Barilla Company. The study explo...
The availability of freshwater is one of the biggest limitations and challenges of food production, as freshwater is an increasingly scarce and overexploited resource in many parts of the world. Therefore, the concept of water footprint (WF) has gain...
In the context of efficient and sustainable management of the elements of the urban water cycle as an aim of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), the evaluation of indicators such as the water footprint (WF) and the carbon footprint (CF) in a wastewa...
This paper presents an assessment of urban water footprint in the period of 2001 to 2012 by taking Leshan City, China as a typical case study. The water footprint is calculated by the sum of the water footprints of various sectors, i.e., crop product...
Chicken is the most consumed meat in the UK, accounting for 40% of meat consumption, while national production sufficiency reaches about 80%. As a farmed animal product, chicken meat is responsible for significant freshwater appropriation volumes dur...
The Water Footprint, as an indicator of water consumption has become increasingly popular for analyzing environmental issues associated with the use of water resources in the global supply chain of consumer goods. This is particularly relevant for co...
The current study was conducted to assess how optimal tillage water and nitrogen management system are adopted to reduce various field inputs, to improve water footprint (WF), nutrient use efficiency (NUE), rice productivity and profitability. The W1...
The growth in the number of studies applying and expanding the concepts of the water footprint and virtual water trade in Spain has generated a wealth of lessons and reflections about the scarcity, allocation, productive use, and management of water...
The limited amount of freshwater is the most important challenge facing Egypt due to increasing population and climate change. The objective of this study was to investigate how climatic change affects the winter potato water footprint at the Nile De...
This modeling study evaluates the combined effects of organic fertilization and irrigation regimes on olive productivity and environmental sustainability in southern Italy. Field experiments were conducted in an organic olive grove (cv. Leccino) unde...
Management practices reputed to be the best are being introduced widely in the agricultural sector. The identification of what these best management practices are for a given cultivation area requires thorough assessment, using indicators that reduce...
Water footprint (WF) is a comprehensive summation of the volume of freshwater consumed directly and indirectly in all the steps of the production chain of a product. The water footprint concept has been widely used in agricultural water resources man...
Irrigated paddy rice agriculture accounts for a major share of Asia Pacific’s total water withdrawal. Furthermore, climate change induced water scarcity in the Asia-Pacific region is projected to intensify in the near future. Therefore, methods...
This special issue is a collection of recent papers in the field of Water Footprint Assessment (WFA), an emerging area of research focused on the analysis of freshwater use, scarcity, and pollution in relation to consumption, production, and trade. A...
Climate change is projected to increase global temperatures and alter rainfall patterns. In Peru, these changes could adversely affect the central basin of the Huallaga River by increasing pest and disease incidence, evapotranspiration, and water con...
We performed a Water Footprint Sustainability Assessment (WFSA) in the Xingu Basin of Mato Grosso (XBMT), Brazil, with the objectives of (1) tracking blue (as surface water) and green water (as soil moisture regenerated by precipitation) consumption...
Copper is an important strategic resource for the national economy and social security of China. Water use is a significant component of copper production. However, water shortages and water pollution are two global crises in water resource managemen...
Argentina stands as the leading producer and exporter of olive products in the Americas, with the province of La Rioja as its main productive area. Since the 1990s, the olive grove cultivated area and related agro-industry in La Rioja have expanded....
Andean high-altitude ecosystems are critical to sustaining biodiversity, agriculture, and the livelihoods of indigenous populations. However, accelerating glacier retreat, irregular precipitation, and intensive water use have exacerbated ecosystem de...
The coordinated development of the water–food–ecology (WFE) nexus is a practical issue that has to be addressed urgently for northwest China’s (WTL) sustainable development. Optimizing the linkage relationship and accomplishing the...
Water resource management has emerged as a pivotal concern within arid regions in recent times. The water footprint (WFP) index stands out as a principal gauge for facilitating comprehensive watershed management. This study endeavors to compute the W...
Bangladesh is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, primarily driven by its textile industries. A high amount of water is consumed and polluted in the production and processing of raw material to the final product in the textile industry...
Steelmaking is a water-intensive process. The mean water intake against each ton of steel manufactured is ascertained as between 2 and 20 m3. Primarily, the stated requirement is in the form of make-up water to compensate for evaporation and mechanic...
The water footprint is an increasingly demanded environmental sustainability indicator for certifications and labels in agricultural production. Processing tomatoes are highly water-intensive, and existing studies on water footprint have uncertaintie...
With water scarcity representing an increasing threat to humans, the environment and the economy, companies are interested in exploring how their operations and supply chains affect water resources globally. To allow for systematically compiling the...
The evaluation of regional water and energy consumption is of great significance to improving regional resource utilization. This paper analyzed the water and energy footprints in different provinces of China, considering regional economic levels. Th...
This paper presents water the footprint assessment (WFA) of carbon in pulp (CIP) gold processing. The main objectives of the study are determining grey and blue water footprints and identifying the hotspots of the process. Results revealed that the t...
We introduce ten studies in the field of water footprint assessment (WFA) that are representative of the type of papers currently being published in this broad interdisciplinary field. WFA is the study of freshwater use, scarcity, and pollution in re...
Urbanization projects, understood as those supplying basic services for cities, such as drinking water, sewers, communication services, power, and lighting, are normally short-term extremely scattered actions, and it can be difficult to track their e...
Water scarcity has emerged as a critical constraint on agricultural development and food security worldwide, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions such as Central Asia, Western Asia, and North Africa, which are part of the “Belt and Road&r...
Water footprinting has revealed hydro-economic interdependencies between distant global geographies via trade, especially of agricultural and manufactured goods. However, for metropolitan areas, trade not only entails commodity flows at many scales f...
This article explores the role of a specific Localised Agri-food System (LAFS) in the provision of Environmental and social benefits (ESBs) in densely cultivated, industrialised, and populated areas by analysing the core of the processing tomato supp...
As the central city of the Yellow River Delta, Dongying faces challenges of water scarcity and water pollution. Based on the grey water footprint theory, the paper conducted grey water footprint accounting, factor analysis, and evaluation in Dongying...
11 February 2021
Research on virtual water and the water footprint is mainly focused on agriculture and industry, and less so on the service sector. The trade in products generates virtual water flow, as does the flow of people. The flow of international tourists wil...
The management of natural resources in economic activities has become a fundamental issue when considering the perspective of sustainable development. It is necessary to rethink every process in order to reach efficiency from different points of view...
In this commentary, we set out the rationale for bringing together two research fields: Water Footprint Assessment and environmental (economic) valuation, which have evolved separately. This has the potential to inform the efficient allocation of vir...
Packaged water consumption has grown rapidly in urban areas of many low‐income and middle‐income countries, but particularly in Ghana. However, the sources of water used by this growing packaged water industry and the implications for water resou...
An increasing number of people want to reduce their environmental footprint by using harvested rainwater as a source for drinking water. Moreover, implementing rainwater harvesting (RWH) enables protection against damage caused by increasing precipit...
Wine constitutes the dominant Italian agricultural product with respect to both production quantity and economic value. Italy is the top wine producer worldwide in terms of volume and the second one below France in terms of national income. As the It...
The water footprint (WF) of crop production is a friendly approach for the analysis of water resource consumption in agricultural production systems. This study assessed the inter-annual variability of the total WF of three types of main crops, namel...
With over 1 billion passenger cars worldwide, even an indiscernible carbon footprint (CF) of the maintenance of a single vehicle has the potential for a relatively large overall environmental effect on the part of the car washing services sector. Thi...
Water is a crucial input for any production system, and mining is no exception. A huge amount of water is being used in the various phases of mining activities. In the coming decades, the competition in using a sufficient amount of fresh water will b...
Increasing global food demand and economic growth result in increasing competition over scarce freshwater resources, worsened by climate change and pollution. The agricultural sector has the largest share in the water footprint of humanity. While mos...
As global food demand grows, the limited availability of natural resources exacerbates environmental and food security challenges. Household food waste is a major yet underexplored issue, contributing to inefficiencies, economic losses, and environme...
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