The water footprint has developed into a widely-used concept to examine water use and resulting local impacts caused during agricultural and industrial production. Building on recent advancements in the water footprint concept, it can be an effective steering instrument to support, inter alia, achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) - SDG 6 in particular. Within the research program “Water as a Global Resource” (GRoW), an initiative of the Federal Ministry for Education and Research, a number of research projects currently apply and enhance the water footprint concept in order to identify areas where water is being used inefficiently and implement practical optimization measures (see imprint for more information). With this paper, we aim to raise awareness on the potential of the water footprint concept to inform decision-making in the public and private sectors towards improved water management and achieving the SDGs.

Water is becoming an increasingly contested resource. Today, the sustainability of water use is assessed with different indicator frameworks that usually refer to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or other norms. Classifying international norms and the subsequent indicators for assessment according to their legitimacy will increase the practical relevance of assessment results. The classification will enable addressees to differentiate between mandatory obligations in water management and additional more ambitious targets for decisions on sustainable water distribution. This study presents 11 standards for sustainable water distribution which have been classified based on legitimacy and specificity. A literature review identified relevant international norms that were subsequently classified. Suggestions for the implementation of the standards and priorities in assessment methods are discussed. Through the new set of standards, assessment results can transparently be communicated to policymakers, NGOs and business and support them to identify their obligations for sustainable water use.

Water provision and distribution are subject to conflicts between users worldwide, with agriculture as a major driver of discords. Water sensitive ecosystems and their services are often impaired by man-made water shortage. Nevertheless, they are not sufficiently included in sustainability or risk assessments and neglected when it comes to distribution of available water resources. The herein presented contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG 6) and Life on Land (SDG 15) is the Ecological Sustainability Assessment of Water distribution (ESAW-tool). The ESAW-tool introduces a watershed sustainability assessment that evaluates the sustainability of the water supply-demand ratio on basin level, where domestic water use and the water requirements of ecosystems are considered as most important water users. An ecological risk assessment estimates potential impacts of agricultural depletion of renewable water resources on (ground)water-dependent ecosystems. The ESAW-tool works in standard GIS applications and is applicable in basins worldwide with a set of broadly available input data. The ESAW-tool is tested in the Danube river basin through combination of high-resolution hydro-agroecological model data (hydrological land surface process model PROMET and groundwater model OpenGeoSys) and further freely available data (water use, biodiversity and wetlands maps). Based on the results, measures for more sustainable water management can be deduced, such as increase of rainfed agriculture near vulnerable ecosystems or change of certain crops. The tool can support decision making of authorities from local to national level as well as private enterprises who want to improve the sustainability of their supply chains.

<p>The water footprint has developed into a widely-used concept to examine water use and resulting local impacts caused during agricultural and industrial production. Building on recent advancements in the water footprint concept, it can be an effective steering instrument to support, inter alia, achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs) - SDG 6 in particular. Within the research program “Water as a Global Resource” (GRoW), an initiative of the Federal Ministry for Education and Research, a number of research projects currently apply and enhance the water footprint concept in order to identify areas where water is being used inefficiently and implement practical optimization measures. We aim to raise awareness on the potential of the water footprint concept to inform decision-making in the public and private sectors towards improved water management and achieving the SDGs. In particular, we show how modern water footprint methods and tools developed in GRoW can inform policy planning towards more sustainable use of water resources at various levels. They can also support producers in determining their indirect water use and associated impacts in supply chains, in addition to their (often comparably low) direct water use at production sites. Finally, we show how the water footprint can raise awareness and inform consumers about the hidden water use and resulting impacts of daily products and services.</p>