Author: Peter L. Daniels
, Manfred Lenzen & Steven J. Kenway
Summary:
This paper reviews current knowledge about water footprints (WFs) and the role of input–output techniques. We first provide an overview of the prevailing bottom-up’s, process-based methods and their strengths and limitations. This overview leads to discussion of the benefits of combining process-based water footprints with information from input–output techniques. The central theme and proposition is that environmental multi-region input–output analysis (E-MRIO) has a powerful capacity to establish the geography of embodied water, and to complement process-based approaches to WF by expanding their supply-chain coverage. Combining process and input–output information provides valuable information for a diverse set of water planning and water policy objectives. A comprehensive and systematic outline of potential policy applications of E-MRIO (and process analysis methods) is presented.
