MEASURING WATER USE IN A GREEN ECONOMY - UNEP

water transfers between adjacent river basins
(e.g. Singapore/Malaysia), or are ‘virtual’ via
the water needed for goods and products,
depending on international agreements, trade
and political developments (trade, pricing,
subsidies).
As the case studies and methodological details
show, particular for Water Footprint Analysis
and Life Cycle Assessments, issues of water
management, consumption and production are
highly relevant to international trade between
developed and developing countries, as well
as within a country with differentiated issues
of scarcity and economic development, as
exemplified by the case studies in the report.
As water is a resource that is tightly bound to
and dependent on local climatic and ecological
conditions, the impacts of water use in any kind
of production chain always have to be analysed
at the local level and in the catchment where
the abstraction for the particular step in the
supply chain takes place. In many cases, and
often for agricultural products, these are in
developing countries.
But water management per se does not
have a global dimension in the way that air
does (greenhouse gases, climate change,
etc.) or other physical commodities such as
ores and fossil fuels which are physically
transported and traded. The global context
of water management is more subtle. In this
perspective it is very important to understand
that all the quantification approaches discussed
in this report need to carefully consider the
physical impacts of water use and possible
overexploitation and pollution in the catchment
of original production of any goods in the global
and trading context.
The most relevant actions and measures to
be taken for sustainable water management
are either driven by national or regional
governments and are thus on a macroeconomic
level, or require management
decisions at a sectoral and corporate level
(e.g. agriculture or industries). Both levels are
of course highly interrelated and also related
to international and inter-regional trade and
policies. However they serve different purposes.
There has to be a distinction between wider
awareness-raising, large-scale policy planning
processes (e.g. at the national or pan-regional
level) and operational planning at the local
level in the river basin. The information for
politicians, stakeholders and the public needs
to be concrete and targeted at all these levels.
Water and interest in water and its use
connect all stakeholders in these and
between these different levels. Those involved
include politicians and administrators at the
different governmental levels and from the
very different sectors, as well as private and
public actors. The range is from actors in
the agriculture and food industry, transport
and energy suppliers, water utilities,
manufacturing industries and enterprises
of all sizes, to actors for the public interests
(consumer, social and environmental NGOs).
The art of water management between these
different actors is one of integration and
balancing powers for the common interest of
further welfare and growth.
The report provides methodologies to inform
the knowledge base at all these levels and to
help ensure that these are applied in the right
combination to link them together in a coherent
decision process, improving the overall
governance of water and including all relevant
actors.
5.3 Decoupling
In this area, spanning economic growth and
human welfare, and ecological integrity
to support both, there is ample evidence
that economic growth is often coupled
with unsustainable depletion of natural
resources which impairs the environmental
foundations of our life. While providing
short-term prosperity to certain parts of the
population, other parts and future generations
are not benefiting in the same way or are
worse off, due to environmental impacts and
deterioration of the natural capital vital for
economic growth and human prosperity. The
principle of decoupling as described in recent
UNEP reports shows an alternative to this
development.
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