Abstract
Cities are hotspots of commodity consumption, with implications for both local and systemic water resources. Water flows “virtually” into and out of cities through the extensive cross-boundary exchange of goods and services. Both virtual and real water flows are affected by water supply investments and urban planning decisions, which influence residential, commercial, and industrial development. This form of water “teleconnection” is being increasingly recognized as an important aspect of water decision-making. The role of trade and virtual water flows as an alternative to expanding a city’s “real” water supply is rarely acknowledged, with an emphasis placed instead on monotonic expansion of engineering potable water supplies. We perform a literature review of water footprint studies to evaluate the potential and importance of taking virtual flows into account in urban planning and policy. We compare and contrast current methods to assess virtual water flows. We also identify and discuss priorities for future research in urban water footprint analysis.
Highlights
Cities are the hub of global economic forces [1,2,3] with their links to distant and proximate locations through extensive exchange networks
This study showed that some water rich countries import from water scarce countries
Hoff et al [69] found that Berlin imported more than 60% of its virtual water from abroad whereas the virtual water for the developing cities of Delhi and Lagos primarily came from domestic sources
Summary
Cities are the hub of global economic forces [1,2,3] with their links to distant and proximate locations through extensive exchange networks. Cities are home to more than half of the world’s population and are expected to support nearly two-thirds by 2050 [4] While this increased urbanization has come to signify greater socioeconomic opportunity and improved social welfare [5,6], it is creating additional stress on our water resources and the ecosystems they support [7,8,9,10]. This is further compounded by the environmental degradation that can result from aging and/or inadequate water infrastructure in cities [11,12,13,14]. The footprint family is a group of accessible and synthetic indicators that connect our consumer habits and production demands to the Earth’s resources [33,34,35,36]
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