Abstract
Green water--rainfall over land that eventually flows back to the atmosphere as evapotranspiration--is the main source of water to produce food, feed, fiber, timber, and bioenergy. To understand how freshwater scarcity constrains production of these goods, we need to consider limits to the green water footprint (WFg), the green water flow allocated to human society. However, research traditionally focuses on scarcity of blue water--groundwater and surface water. Here we expand the debate on water scarcity by considering green water scarcity (WSg). At 5 × 5 arc-minute spatial resolution, we quantify WFg and the maximum sustainable level to this footprint (WFg,m), while accounting for green water requirements to support biodiversity. We then estimate WSg per country as the ratio of the national aggregate WFg to the national aggregate WFg,m We find that globally WFg amounts to 56% of WFg,m, and overshoots it in several places, for example in countries in Europe, Central America, the Middle East, and South Asia. The sustainably available green water flows in these countries are mostly or fully allocated to human activities (predominately agriculture and forestry), occasionally at the cost of green water flows earmarked for nature. ...Continue Reading
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