The water footprint of Indonesian provinces related to the consumption of crop products

Community welfare and food security in Indonesia partly depend on developments in the agricultural sector. This sector increasingly faces the problem of water scarcity caused by declining water resources and increasing competition over water with households and industries. To overcome these problems and to ensure stability, economic growth and food security, it has been recognised that the government has to reform the water policy in Indonesia. Water policies are most of the time based on the water withdrawal per sector. A useful addition to this are the concepts of water footprint and virtual water trade. The water footprint is an indicator of water use that looks at both direct and indirect water use. The water footprint of the people in a province is defined as the total amount of water that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the inhabitants of the province. This water footprint is partly inside the province itself (the internal footprint) and partly presses somewhere else (external footprint). Virtual-water trade refers to the transfer of water in virtual form from one place to another as a result of product trade. Virtual water refers to the volume of freshwater embedded in a product, not in real but virtual sense; it refers to the water that was used to make the product. Quantitative information about the water footprint per province and interprovincial virtual water flows can feed a discussion on the role of trade in water resources management. The aim of this report is to quantify interprovincial virtual water flows related to trade in crop products and determine the water footprint related to the consumption of crop products per Indonesian province.