WATER FOOTPRINT

What is water footprint?

• The water footprint is an indicator of water use that includes both direct and indirect water use of a consumer or produce.

• The water footprint of an individual, community or business is defined as the total volume of freshwater used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business. Water use is measured in water volume consumed (evaporated) and/or polluted per unit of time. A water footprint can be calculated for any well-defined group of consumers (e.g. an individual, family, village, city, province, state or nation) or producers (e.g. a public organization, private enterprise or economic sector). The water footprint is a geographically explicit indicator, not only showing volumes of water use and pollution, but also the locations. However, the water footprint does not provide information on how the embedded water negatively or positively affects local water resources, ecosystems and livelihoods.( Definition by Wikipedia) 

Let's look at Water Footprint of our country, Malaysia.

(http://www.wwf.org.my/media_and_information/publications_main/living_planet_report_2010/water_footprint/)

Using a Water Footprint Calculator from Waterfootprint.org, this is the water footprint of Malaysia.

Average water footprint of the country = m3/capita/yr Part of footprint falling outside of the country = %

Global average water footprint = 1243 m3/cap/yr.

*The total water footprint of a country includes two components: the part of the footprint that falls inside the country (internal water footprint) and the part of the footprint that presses on other countries in the world (external water footprint)

 You can also calculate your own water footprint here

http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=cal/waterfootprintcalculator_indv