Reply to Pfister and Hellweg: Water footprint accounting, impact assessment, and life-cycle assessment

Arjen Y. Hoekstra, Winnie Gerbens-Leenes, Theo H. van der Meer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

54 Citations (Scopus)
139 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

In response to our article on the blue and green water footprint (WF) of bioenergy (1), others propose to multiply each blue WF component by a water-stress index and neglect green WFs, because impacts would be nil (2). They propose to redefine the WF from a volumetric measure to an index resulting from multiplying volumes by impact factors. Framing their argument within the logic of life-cycle assessment (LCA), they ignore the primary and established role of the WF in water-resources management (WRM). Redefining the WF does not make sense from a WRM perspective, which requires spatially and temporally explicit information on WFs in real volumes and impacts in real terms.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)E114-E114
Number of pages1
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume106
Issue number40
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2009

Keywords

  • IR-77185
  • METIS-259609

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