Advancing the Water Footprint into an instrument to support achieving the SDGs

The water footprint has developed into a widely-used concept to examine water use and resulting local impacts caused during agricultural and industrial production. Building on recent advancements in the water footprint concept, it can be an effective steering instrument to support, inter alia, achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) - SDG 6 in particular.

Within the research program “Water as a Global Resource” (GRoW), an initiative of the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF), a number of research projects currently apply and enhance the water footprint concept in order to identify areas where water is being used inefficiently and implement practical optimisation measures.

With this policy brief, we aim to raise awareness on the potential of the water footprint concept to inform decision-making in the public and private sectors towards improved water management and achieving the SDGs.

The GRoW Policy Brief will be presented at the World Water Week in Stockholm on 26 August 2019. More on the event “Supporting SDG6 by advancing the water footprint tool”

This policy brief has been developed by adelphi and a group of researchers involved in the various GRoW projects concerned with water footprint:

• WELLE
• ViWA
• GlobeDrought
• InoCottonGROW                      
• WANDEL
• MedWater
• go-CAM

Contact: Elsa Semmling

Based on this Policy Brief, the article "Advancing the Water Footprint into an Instrument to Support Achieving the SDGs – Recommendations from the 'Water as a Global Resources' Research Initiative (GRoW)" was elaborated and got published in March 2021 in the journal "Water Resources Management".