Building consensus on a generic water scarcity indicator for LCA-based water footprint: preliminary results from WULCA

Consuming water can affect human health (e.g. by reducing availability of irrigation water and hence food availability), ecosystems (by decreasing water availability for terrestrial/aquatic species) and future generations (by depleting non-renewable resources). However, no standard method exists to quantify the stress on water without favoring any of these areas of protection. Stress/scarcity indexes have fo-cused on an anthropocentric perspective, and a few on an ecocentric perspective. We explore the possibility of developing an indicator considering the water resource as a whole and propose a method which is not centered on an area of protection but rather assesses the ex-tent to which all water demand and availability differ within a watershed (i.e. hydrocentric). This concept can eventually serve as a single metric to assess potential impacts from water use and be used consistently in the application of the upcoming ISO standard and for ecolabelling of food and energy products.

BOULAY Anne-Marie;  BARE Jane;  BENINI Lorenzo;  BERGER Markus;  KLEMMAYER Inga;  LATHULLIERE Michael;  LOUBET Philippe;  MANZARDO Alessandro;  MARGNI Manuele;  NÚÑEZ Montserrat;  RIDOUTT Bradley;  WORBE Sebastien;  PFISTER Stephan; 

2015-03-12

American Center for Life Cycle Assessment

JRC90064

978-0-9882145-7-6,   

http://lcafood2014.org/proceedings/LCA_Food_2014_Proceedings.pdf,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC90064,