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2015 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Not All Drops of Water Are the Same

Authors : Francesca Greco, Marta Antonelli

Published in: The Water We Eat

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Where does the food we eat come from? Is it good for me? And am I doing the right thing in consuming it? In a world of limited resources, questioning ourselves about our lifestyles and our consumption patterns is not only desirable but also necessary. For this reason, we have introduced here the concept of “virtual water”, namely the water required to produce the food, goods and services that we consume daily (Allan 1993, 1994, 1998). Thanks to the application of this concept, we will discover that we consume much more water than that we effectively see “running” before our eyes; we will highlight that the data showing Italian water consumption being 152 cubic litres a year per capita only reflect a partial consumption, referring only to the water used for our domestic purposes (drinking, cooking, washing, etc.).

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next chapter Water and Food Security: Food-water and Food Supply Value Chains
Footnotes
1
ISTAT data released for the World Water Day, 21 March 2011.
 
2
2013 AQUASTAT data show the global percentages of use by sector: 70 % agriculture, 19 % industry and 11 % domestic use. Data available at: http://​www.​fao.​org/​nr/​water/​aquastat/​water_​use/​index.​stm
 
3
On 28 July 2010, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution A/64/L.63/Rev.1 stating the right to safe clean drinking water and to sanitation services as a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life and all other human rights.
 
4
Different tools exist in the attempt to limit the externalization of environmental costs regarding the use of water for society. These include the following: sanctioning illegal water connections, setting up a pricing system for the distribution of water for irrigation and establishing a tax on groundwater pollution based on the principle “those who pollute pay”. There is also a proposal for a tax on the use of agricultural land for building purposes that would place sanctions on the loss of agricultural land “sealed” by cement (see Ambiente Italia 2012, edited by D. Bianchi and G. Conti, Edizioni Ambiente 2012) (Bianchi and Conte 2012).
 
6
The theorizing of the concepts of blue and green water is the work of Malin Falkenmark (1989), a Swedish hydrologist and member of the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI).
 
7
Different authors refer to green water as having a very low or zero cost opportunity. Some have suggested that green water could be considered as a “gift” (Chatterton et al. 2010; Chapagain and Orr 2009).
 
8
Note that the volume of water required to produce the same foodstuff can vary considerably depending on the production site—the productivity of water is, in fact, conditioned by the soil characteristics and climatic factors, by the technologies used and by the resource management methods. This means that the volume of water required to produce a tomato in temperate areas will be different from the virtual water contained in the same product coming from arid or semi-arid regions.
 
9
Further studies are being carried out to also identify all the cases involving over-exploited water used to irrigate products in Italy marked for exportation, both internally (south–north) and for foreign markets, at King's College London, London Water Research Group, Francesca Greco.
 
10
Aldaya and Hoekstra (2010), “Analyzing International Virtual Water Trade and Water Footprint of Products” presented during the Corporate Water Footprinting and Managing Water Resources Meeting, London, 28–29 May.
 
11
The reference is to the companies Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus.
 
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Metadata
Title
Not All Drops of Water Are the Same
Authors
Francesca Greco
Marta Antonelli
Copyright Year
2015
Book
The Water We Eat

Print ISBN: 978-3-319-16392-5

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-16393-2

Copyright Year: 2015

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16393-2_1