Over the past decades, water scarcity has become prevalent in many regions of world. Previous assessments largely considered “blue water” (surface and groundwater) overlooked “green (soil moisture), despite its key role supporting crop production. Moreover, long-term evolution remains unclear. Here, we propose an agricultural index (WSIAW) that explicitly combines green blue water. The WSIAW me...

This special issue is a collection of recent papers in the field of Water Footprint Assessment (WFA), an emerging area of research focused on the analysis of freshwater use, scarcity, and pollution in relation to consumption, production, and trade. As increasing freshwater scarcity forms a major risk to the global economy, sustainable management of water resources is a prerequisite to developme...

A novel global water scarcity assessment for the 21st century is presented in a two-part paper. In this first paper, water use scenarios are presented for the latest global hydrological models. The scenarios are compatible with the socio-economic scenarios of the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs), which are a part of the latest set of scenarios on global change developed by the integrated a...

Demand for hydropower is increasing, yet the water footprints (WFs) of reservoirs and hydropower, and their contributions to water scarcity, are poorly understood. Here, we calculate reservoir WFs (freshwater that evaporates from reservoirs) and hydropower WFs (the WF of hydroelectricity) in China based on data from 875 representative reservoirs (209 with power plants). In 2010, the reservoir W...

How do countries that share cross-border rivers respond to periods of abnormally low water availability? This article argues that understanding whether countries react cooperatively or conflictually to within-basin shortages is just as important as identifying the influence of cross-basin differences in absolute availability. To study the effects of within-basin, relative scarcity, the article ...

Several hydrological studies forecast a global problem of water scarcity. This raises the question as to whether increasing water scarcity may impose constraints on the growth of countries. The influence of water utilisation on economic growth is depicted through a growth model that includes this congestible nonexcludable good as a productive input for private producers. Growth is negatively af...