Abstract
Water is fundamental to human well-being and economic growth. Measuring how water contributes to sustainable development is an important aspect of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6, ‘Water and sanitation for all’. This importance is especially significant for water-scarce developing countries such as South Africa. Appropriate indicators can support decision-making and highlight key issues on inequality, unemployment and sustainability. In this paper, additional indicators for SDG 6.4 on water-use efficiency are proposed that focus on how individuals and households benefit, both directly and indirectly, from the allocations and use of water resources. The Berg Water Management Area (WMA) in the southwest corner of South Africa is used as a case study to illustrate the results. Residential per capita water use and municipal water losses were determined for all towns in the area. Figures for jobs and income per unit of water use were calculated for the heavily water-dependent industries, namely, agriculture, agriprocessing, freshwater aquaculture, mining and steel processing. This approach to measuring the socio-economic benefits of water use are relevant for other countries seeking to measure the role that water plays in achieving inclusive sustainable development, and could be included in the final SDG 6 indicator suite.
 Significance: 
 
 New measures of water-use efficiency based on jobs and income are proposed.
 New indicators are proposed for SDG 6.
 Water use, jobs and annual income are estimated for all heavily water-dependent sectors in the Berg WMA.
Highlights
Since the approval of ‘Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development’ and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in September 20151, the UN Inter-Agency and Expert Group (IAEG) on SDGs has developed 241 global indicators across the 169 targets and 17 goals[2]
Supplementary table 7 provides municipal-level data for moderately water-dependent jobs per sector. These results show that, at the municipal level residential water use is within the targeted range, 11 towns are below the recommended minimum target of 100 litres per capita per day (L/c/d) and 6 towns are above the proposed maximum target of 300 L/c/d
The results show that 9% of jobs in the Berg Water Management Area (WMA) are heavily dependent on water and 16% are moderately dependent on water
Summary
Since the approval of ‘Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development’ and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in September 20151, the UN Inter-Agency and Expert Group (IAEG) on SDGs has developed 241 global indicators across the 169 targets and 17 goals[2]. The six main targets cover access to safe drinking water (6.1), access to sanitation (6.2), water quality (6.3), water-use efficiency and scarcity (6.4), water resources management (6.5) and water-related ecosystems (6.6), while the means of implementation targets cover official development assistance (6.a) and participation of local communities in management (6.b). The methodologies are undergoing pilot testing to incorporate lessons learnt at the country level[4] and the global indicators will be complemented by regional and national indicators developed by Member States[1]
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