The water supply footprint (WSF): a strategic planning tool for sustainable regional and local water supplies

Abstract

This paper introduces a new methodological approach of the ecological footprint explicitly addressing the sustainability of water supplies, which we call the water supply footprint (WSF). The WSF calculates the catchment area or water supply hinterland of a certain society and can serve as a strategic planning tool for local or regional water supplies linking the water demand with the water supply in a water supply footprint matrix. Based on regional water balances it estimates how much water can be appropriated for human use in an environmentally sustainable way.The proposed method is tested on the South East Queensland water supply in Australia, an area where water use restrictions are regularly imposed on the population. Applying the proposed method indicates that supply shortages may be avoided by considerably changing the organisation of water supply, thereby reducing and possibly even avoiding the necessity for large-scale supply side measures like additional sweet water reservoirs or desalination plants. In that way it is demonstrated that the WSF method is applicable at an early and strategic stage of water supply planning. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Water supplies; Ecological footprint; Water footprint; Water supply footprint; Sustainable water supplies

Published in

Journal of Cleaner Production
2011, volume: 19, number: 15, pages: 1677-1686
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCI LTD

SLU Authors

• Edwards, Peter

  • Department of Forest Products, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • Griffith University

Global goals (SDG)

SDG6 Clean water and sanitation

UKÄ Subject classification

Fish and Aquacultural Science

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2011.05.020

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/58910