Review Paper on Agricultural, Industrial and Domestic Water Footprint of India

This study focussed on reviewing the published literatures on estimation of water footprint of India in agriculture, industrial and domestic sector and finding the data gaps. A number of literatures have been addressed in order to understand the concept, need, approach, limitation and scope of water footprint in India. There is very limited literature available specifically on water footprint of India, so this study sustained on global research papers on water footprint to analyse the Indian Water Footprint perspective. The concept of water footprint has been established to estimate the consumptive use of water in every sector. Water footprint is the amount of water utilised to produce any product or avail any service. With only 1/25th of the world’s water resources India supports 1/6th of the world population. India is hurtling to become water scarce country from water stressed country. Proper information on water footprint will enhance our understanding of planning and execution of our activities in sustainable way. It can even reduce water stress and forecast the vulnerability of water scarcity and drought. By combining this partial tool of water footprint with other analytical means we can take smart and sustainable decision. There is very limited literature available on water footprint of India as this study did not witness any recent data i.e. data from last five years on water footprint of India in all the three sectors. It was difficult to access water footprint papers of industries as majority of industries keep their data private. There is scarcity of research on domestic water footprint in India as proper estimation of water footprint of domestic sector is a bit complicated task. The Water Footprint Assessment Manual (Hoekstra et al., 2011) is being used as guiding tool for calculation of water footprint. The methodology and equations for calculation of agricultural water footprint is similar in all the studied papers while Jeswani & Azapagic (2011) raised the concern on Hoekstra’s approach that water footprint only represents the quantity of water use without approximation of the related environmental impacts and inclusion of green water in quantification of water does not affect availability of blue water, so it should not be accounted. This concern needs to be addressed for further research in water footprint calculation method. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) software SimaPro has all the building blocks to calculate proper water footprint but it is not freely accessible. Software like CLIMWAT 2.0 and CROPWAT 8.0 which are helpful in calculation of agricultural water footprint are freely accessible. Water footprint is a fractional tool to address sustainability issue. It gives a rough estimated structure to execute our sustainability plan further. This study addresses the data gaps and need of further research on water footprint calculation in India in the stated three sectors. The result shows that there is huge need to expand further research on Water Footprint to address sustainable life on earth.