Day 29, 30 & Water Footprint

 Day 29 - 19 litres

 Day 30 - 22 litres

My last day!!

Since I touched on virtual water, I would like to expand on that and talk about the Water Footprint concept. It is based off the idea of the ecological footprint, which is a measure of the demand a person places on earth's ecosystems. I imagine most people are pretty familiar with it, but it assesses the amount of productive land or sea needed to sustain someone based on their actions.

Based on the amount of productive land and sea around the world, and the globe's population, the amount available per person is 1.8 hectares. However, the global average use is 2.8 hectares. Obviously people from countries in the global north, by and large, use far more than people from countries in the global south.

To calculate your own eco-footprint, click here (I don't find this particular calculator great, but it was the best one I could find online).

A water footprint then is an indicator of how both producers and consumers are using freshwater. The water footprint of an individual, community or business is defined as the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business.

It is essentially a virtual water, but can be applied to whole countries. Basically, to do this you take the water consumed within a country and also the water consumed in countries where the imports are produced. 

Canada's water footprint, for example, is 2049 m3 (2,049,000 litres) per capita per year. The global average is 1243m3 (1,243,000 litres) per capita per year.

A water footprint, since it uses two components (internal and external water use) also allows us to determine how water self sufficient  a country is. Shockingly, Canada imports 20% of its net water use!  That is crazy when you consider that Australia, which has faced reoccurring droughts, imports only 19%.

On the other end of the spectrum, Lebanon, a typically water scarce country, imports 67% of its water!

To see more countries water footprints, learn your personal water footprint or just learn more about the concept, look at this website: http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/home