This is an appropriate topic, given that Stockholm Water Prize winner Tony Allan is in Sweden this week receiving the award for introducing the concept of virtual water.
Colleague Walter Lyon sent me a link to this Guardian interactive graphic showing where Britain's external water footprint falls most heavily. So you can see the countries serving as GB's main "water farms". Very interesting.
The photo, from the story, shows Weir Wood reservoir in East Sussex.
There is also a companion story about water use in Great Britain. Each Briton uses 4,645 liters per day (1,227 US gallons), but only 38% comes from within Britain - the rest is virtual water.
Some more tidbits:
- Average household water use for washing and drinking in the UK is about 150 liters a person daily, but we consume about 30 times as much in "virtual water", used in the production of imported food and textiles;
- Only Brazil, Mexico, Japan, China and Italy come higher in the league of net importers of virtual agricultural water. People in poorer countries typically subsist on 1,000 liters of virtual water a day;
- Different diets have different water footprints. A meat and dairy-based diet consumes about 5,000 liters of virtual water a day while a vegetarian diet uses about 2,000 liters.
So what are the water footprints of other countries? Here is a paper that calculates these numbers. The USA's is 2,483 cubic meters per person per year, or about 6,900 liters (1,824 US gallons) per person per day. It was about double the global average, and the highest of the countries listed in the report. Interestingly, the paper calculated GB's water footprint at only 3,410 liters (900 US gallons) per person per day.
If you want to calculate your own total (wet + virtual) water footprint, you can visit the H2O Calculator. The results will surprise you. My number is about the same as that of the average Brit. I can do better.
And here's a plea from Peter Preston to plan for drought, even though it may be raining.
"This island is almost made of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish in Great Britain at the same time." -- Aneurin Bevan (Welsh politician, 1897-1960)
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