MEASURING WATER USE IN A GREEN ECONOMY - UNEP

Executive Summary
Humanity’s key challenge over the coming
decades will be to meet the energy, land, water
and material needs of up to 9 billion people,
while keeping climate change, biodiversity loss
and health threats within acceptable limits.
Countries are already facing common but
differentiated challenges requiring a range
of solutions specific to each situation. A key
factor in determining which solution is most
appropriate will be the availability of data and
information on how much water is available
and how it is being used, and the frameworks
for assessing the distributional needs of each
society.
The International Resource Panel (IRP)
considers that achieving sustainable patterns
of consumption and production equitably
while maintaining the integrity of the natural
environment requires the decoupling of
economic growth from resource use and
environmental degradation. The two main
objectives of the panel are:
• to contribute to a better understanding of
how to decouple economic growth from
environmental degradation;
• to provide independent, coherent and
authoritative scientific assessments of
policy relevance on the sustainable use of
resources and their environmental impacts
over the full life cycle.
The IRP Working Group on Integrated
Sustainable Water Management is examining
ways of achieving decoupling through improved
water productivity, for example in the harvesting,
use and reuse of water, and of defining a
measurement framework for achieving efficient,
effective and equitable water use. This first
working-group report covers the analytical
methods and policy frameworks needed to
ensure that water use can be properly quantified
over the life cycle and integrated into decoupling
measures within the green economy. Following
this report, and using the conceptual and
methodological analysis set out in it, the IRP
will publish two further assessments – an
overview of the scope of the water management
problem around the world and an analysis of
the economic and social elements of water
productivity and efficiency together with aspects
of governance and institutional arrangements.
This modular approach aims to provide a
comprehensive overview of the policy options
available to implement sustainable water
management in a green economy in a way that
recognises water as vital natural capital while
at the same time developing a healthy and
productive water sector within an economy that
cares for and enables social equity.
The conceptual and
methodological analysis
As water availability is not only highly
dependent on the global hydrological cycle but
also on local and regional water management
regimes, much data and information need to
be brought together. Accounting is seen as a
crucial tool for the purpose of overall water
management and the generation of economic
assessments, alongside GDP growth and other
economy-wide indicators such as greenhouse
gas emissions. There is a need to address
ecosystem services within such resource
accounting schemes, to enable the links to be
made between resource efficiency, biodiversity
and ecosystem services and hence the
connection to the social values of water.
An important trend that emerges is a significant
and growing interest from the corporate world
in taking water resources into account when
considering future business. For public bodies
involved in determining water balances, there
is a need not only to produce quantitative
estimates of stocks and flows but also to assess
the impact of fluctuations and uncertainties
coming from the global hydrological cycle on
water abstraction licenses and access rights
and on the quality of water.
One of the key features determining the
balance between water demands and
availability is the emerging view of how best
to take the water needed to sustain the
many different types of ecosystem services
into account. One important conclusion
is that there is a common need across all
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