IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/waterr/v21y2007i1p35-48.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Water footprints of nations: Water use by people as a function of their consumption pattern

Author

Listed:
  • A. Hoekstra
  • A. Chapagain

Abstract

The water footprint shows the extent of water use in relation to consumption of people. The water footprint of a country is defined as the volume of water needed for the production of the goods and services consumed by the inhabitants of the country. The internal water footprint is the volume of water used from domestic water resources; the external water footprint is the volume of water used in other countries to produce goods and services imported and consumed by the inhabitants of the country. The study calculates the water footprint for each nation of the world for the period 1997–2001. The USA appears to have an average water footprint of 2480,m 3 /cap/yr, while China has an average footprint of 700,m 3 /cap/yr. The global average water footprint is 1240,m 3 /cap/yr. The four major direct factors determining the water footprint of a country are: volume of consumption (related to the gross national income); consumption pattern (e.g. high versus low meat consumption); climate (growth conditions); and agricultural practice (water use efficiency). Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007

Suggested Citation

  • A. Hoekstra & A. Chapagain, 2007. "Water footprints of nations: Water use by people as a function of their consumption pattern," Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), Springer;European Water Resources Association (EWRA), vol. 21(1), pages 35-48, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:waterr:v:21:y:2007:i:1:p:35-48
    DOI: 10.1007/s11269-006-9039-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11269-006-9039-x
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11269-006-9039-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:waterr:v:21:y:2007:i:1:p:35-48. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.