MEASURING WATER USE IN A GREEN ECONOMY - UNEP

Foreword
Without doubt water and its abundance or its scarcity will define human well-being,
environmental sustainability and economic activity in the 21 st century.
The world is awash with reports warning about water stressed areas now and in the future; the
relative demands of competing industries locally and regionally and fears that without sustainable
management, cooperation and improved and more efficient
use water resources may become a driver and an escalator of
tensions and conflicts over the coming years and decades.
Meanwhile a raft of important studies and assessments have
equally underlined the importance of water to wider society
in terms of its role in maintaining healthy ecosystems whose
services not only underpin economic activity but the viability of
the planet as a home for seven billion people, rising to over nine
billion by 2050.
This report by the UNEP-hosted International Resource Panel marks a serious and critical
analysis of the way societies are managing water supplies including how those supplies are
allocated across sectors, interests and the environment.
It provides a critique of the various regimes and systems that have evolved over time alongside
new and evolving initiatives that together may illuminate a pathway to the ultimate goal of
decoupling resource use—in this case water—from economic development and growth and
environmental degradation.
Importantly it makes a case that at some scales and linked with globalization water must be
considered as a global issue, rather like the atmosphere: not least because water is being traded
and used across continents as a result of the shipment and exchange of goods and products—so
called ‘virtual water’.
There are clearly many interesting and innovative ways of achieving the adage—if you can
measure it, you can manage it. The report looks at Water Registers and Water Footprinting
up to Life Cycle Assessments backed up by case studies of places and countries where such
management regimes have been piloted and tested including in Australia’s Murray Darling River
Basin and within river basins in China to innovative approaches by a company like Volkswagen in
respect to car manufacturing.
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