CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 75Water resources management and optimizationWater Resources and SustainabilityEnvironmental Impact and Sustainability

Capping Human Water Footprints in the World's River Basins

Open access
Hogeboom, Rick J., de Bruin, Davey, Schyns, Joep F., Krol, Maarten S., Hoekstra, Arjen Y.·2020·Earth's Future
DOI 10.1029/2019ef001363PMC PMC7375134
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Increased water demand and overexploitation of limited freshwater resources lead to water scarcity, economic downturn, and conflicts over water in many places around the world. A sensible policy measure to bridle humanity's water footprint, then, is to set local and time‐specific water footprint caps, to ensure that water appropriation for human uses remains within ecological boundaries. This study estimates—for all river basins in the world—monthly blue water flows that can be allocated to human uses, while explicitly earmarking water for nature. Addressing some implications of temporal variability, we quantify trade‐offs between potentially violating environmental flow requirements versus underutilizing available flow—a trade‐off that is particularly pronounced in basins with a high seasonal and interannual variability. We discuss several limitations and challenges that need to be overcome if setting water footprint caps is to become a practically applicable policy instrument, including the need (for policy makers) to reach agreement on which specific capping procedure to follow. We conclude by relating local and time‐specific water footprint caps to the planetary boundary for freshwater use.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1029/2019ef001363

Cites

2 of 2 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Based on estimated global blue water runoff of approximately 42,000 km3 a-1, a sustainable level of human use may be 1,200-8,300 km3 a-1 depending on the chosen criteria.

    “On the basis of estimated global blue water runoff (approximately 42,000 km 3 a -1 ), a sustainable level of human use may be 1,200-8,300 km 3 a -1 (55), depending on the chosen criteria.”

    From Restoring Degraded Lands (2021) · cites this paper as [55]

  • At present humans withdraw approximately 2,500-3,200 km3 a-1.

    “Given that at present humans withdraw approximately 2,500-3,200 km 3 a -1 , these numbers paint at first sight a relatively encouraging picture.”

    From Restoring Degraded Lands (2021) · cites this paper as [55]

    The ‘A Basis for a PB on Water’ section gives 3,200 km³/year as a modeled planetary-boundary estimate, not a measurement of present human withdrawals. The ‘Model Variability and Limitations’ section reports runoff and water-availability estimates. Searches for 2,500 and current withdrawals found no passage giving the claimed withdrawal range; page numbers were unavailable in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.78)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 48

  1. Bourblanc, M., & Blanchon, D. (2014). The challenges of rescaling South African water resources management: Catchment Management Agencies and interbasin transfers. Journal of Hydrology, 519, 2381– 2391.
  2. Brewer, S. K., McManamay, R. A., Miller, A. D., Mollenhauer, R., Worthington, T. A., & Arsuffi, T. (2016). Advancing environmental flow science: Developing frameworks for altered landscapes and integrating efforts across disciplines. Environmental Management, 58(2), 175– 192. 10.1007/s00267-016-0703-5 27177541 · DOI
  3. Colglazier, W. (2015). Sustainable development agenda: 2030. Science, 349(6252), 1048– 1050. 10.1126/science.aad2333 26339011 · DOI
  4. Di Baldassarre, G., Wanders, N., AghaKouchak, A., Kuil, L., Rangecroft, S., Veldkamp, T. I. E., Garcia, M., van Oel, P. R., Breinl, K., & Van Loon, A. F. (2018). Water shortages worsened by reservoir effects. Nature Sustainability, 1(11), 617– 622.
  5. Do, H. X., Gudmundsson, L., Leonard, M., & Westra, S. (2018). The Global Streamflow Indices and Metadata Archive (GSIM)—Part 1: The production of a daily streamflow archive and metadata. Earth System Science Data, 10(2), 765– 785.
  6. Döll, P., & Lehner, B. (2002). Validation of a new global 30‐min drainage direction map. Journal of Hydrology, 258(1), 214– 231.
  7. Foley, J. A., Ramankutty, N., Brauman, K. A., Cassidy, E. S., Gerber, J. S., Johnston, M., Mueller, N. D., O'Connell, C., Ray, D. K., West, P. C., Balzer, C., Bennett, E. M., Carpenter, S. R., Hill, J., Monfreda, C., Polasky, S., Rockström, J., Sheehan, J., Siebert, S., Tilman, D., & Zaks, D. P. M. (2011). Solutions for a cultivated planet. Nature, 478, 337. 21993620
  8. Gerten, D., Hoff, H., Rockström, J., Jägermeyr, J., Kummu, M., & Pastor, A. V. (2013). Towards a revised planetary boundary for consumptive freshwater use: Role of environmental flow requirements. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 5(6), 551– 558.
  9. Gleeson, T., Wada, Y., Bierkens, M. F. P., & Van Beek, L. P. H. (2012). Water balance of global aquifers revealed by groundwater footprint. Nature, 488(7410), 197– 200. 10.1038/nature11295 22874965 · DOI · Paper page
  10. Gleick, P. H. (2019). Water as a weapon and casualty of armed conflict: A review of recent water‐related violence in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Water, 6(4), e1351.
  11. Grafton, R. Q., Pittock, J., Williams, J., Jiang, Q., Possingham, H., & Quiggin, J. (2014). Water planning and hydro‐climatic change in the Murray‐Darling Basin, Australia. Ambio, 43(8), 1082– 1092. 10.1007/s13280-014-0495-x 24570213 PMC4235900 · DOI
  12. Greve, P., Kahil, T., Mochizuki, J., Schinko, T., Satoh, Y., Burek, P., Fischer, G., Tramberend, S., Burtscher, R., Langan, S., & Wada, Y. (2018). Global assessment of water challenges under uncertainty in water scarcity projections. Nature Sustainability, 1(9), 486– 494.
  13. Haddeland, I., Clark, D. B., Franssen, W., Ludwig, F., Voß, F., Arnell, N. W., Bertrand, N., Best, M., Folwell, S., Gerten, D., Gomes, S., Gosling, S. N., Hagemann, S., Hanasaki, N., Harding, R., Heinke, J., Kabat, P., Koirala, S., Oki, T., Polcher, J., Stacke, T., Viterbo, P., Weedon, G. P., & Yeh, P. (2011). Multimodel estimate of the global terrestrial water balance: Setup and first results. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 12(5), 869– 884.
  14. Hall, J. W., Grey, D., Garrick, D., Fung, F., Brown, C., Dadson, S. J., & Sadoff, C. W. (2014). Coping with the curse of freshwater variability. Science, 346(6208), 429– 430. 10.1126/science.1257890 25342791 · DOI
  15. Hanasaki, N., Kanae, S., Oki, T., Masuda, K., Motoya, K., Shirakawa, N., Shen, Y., & Tanaka, K. (2008). An integrated model for the assessment of global water resources—Part 1: Model description and input meteorological forcing. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 12(4), 1007– 1025.
  16. Heistermann, M. (2017). HESS Opinions: A planetary boundary on freshwater use is misleading. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 21(7), 3455– 3461.
  17. Hoekstra, A. Y. (2013). The water footprint of modern consumer society. Oxon: Routledge.
  18. Hoekstra, A. Y. (2014). Sustainable, efficient, and equitable water use: The three pillars under wise freshwater allocation. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Water, 1(1), 31– 40.
  19. Hoekstra, A. Y. (2017). Water footprint assessment (WFA): Evolvement of a new research field. Water Resources Management, 31(10), 3061– 3081.
  20. Hoekstra, A. Y., Mekonnen, M. M., Chapagain, A. K., Mathews, R. E., & Richter, B. D. (2012). Global monthly water scarcity: Blue water footprints versus blue water availability. PLoS ONE, 7(2). PMC3290560 22393438
  21. Hoekstra, A. Y., & Wiedmann, T. O. (2014). Humanity's unsustainable environmental footprint. Science, 344(6188), 1114– 1117. 10.1126/science.1248365 24904155 · DOI
  22. Hogeboom, R. H. J., van Oel, P. R., Krol, M. S., & Booij, M. J. (2015). Modelling the influence of groundwater abstractions on the water level of Lake Naivasha, Kenya under data‐scarce conditions. Water Resources Management, 29(12), 4447– 4463.
  23. Hogeboom, R. J., de Bruin, D., Schyns, J. F., Krol, M. S., & Hoekstra, A. Y. (2019). Capping human water footprints in the world's river basins, Mendeley Data, v1. 10.17632/n97vjpxhj2.1 PMC7375134 32715009 · DOI
  24. Kavvas, M. L., Chen, Z. Q., Anderson, M. L., Ohara, N., Yoon, J. Y., & Xiang, F. (2011). A study of water balances over the Tigris–Euphrates watershed. Physics and Chemistry of the Earth, Parts A/B/C, 36(5), 197– 203.
  25. Kummu, M., Guillaume, J. H. A., de Moel, H., Eisner, S., Flörke, M., Porkka, M., Siebert, S., Veldkamp, T. I. E., & Ward, P. J. (2016). The world's road to water scarcity: Shortage and stress in the 20th century and pathways towards sustainability. Scientific Reports, 6, 38495. 27934888 PMC5146931
  26. Kundzewicz, Z. W., & Kowalczak, P. (2009). The potential for water conflict is on the increase. Nature, 459, 31. 19424136
  27. Mekonnen, M. M., Gerbens‐Leenes, P. W., & Hoekstra, A. Y. (2016). Future electricity: The challenge of reducing both carbon and water footprint. Science of the Total Environment, 569‐570, 1282– 1288. 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.06.204 27387812 · DOI
  28. Mekonnen, M. M., & Hoekstra, A. Y. (2016). Four billion people facing severe water scarcity. Science Advances, 2(2), e1500323 10.1126/sciadv.1500323 26933676 PMC4758739 · DOI · Paper page
  29. Müller Schmied, H., Adam, L., Eisner, S., Fink, G., Flörke, M., Kim, H., Oki, T., Portmann, F. T., Reinecke, R., Riedel, C., Song, Q., Zhang, J., & Döll, P. (2016). Variations of global and continental water balance components as impacted by climate forcing uncertainty and human water use. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 20(7), 2877– 2898.
  30. Pang, A., Li, C., Sun, T., Yang, W., & Yang, Z. (2018). Trade‐off analysis to determine environmental flows in a highly regulated watershed. Scientific Reports, 8(1), 14130 10.1038/s41598-018-32126-6 30237559 PMC6148294 · DOI
  31. Pastor, A. V., Ludwig, F., Biemans, H., Hoff, H., & Kabat, P. (2014). Accounting for environmental flow requirements in global water assessments. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 18(12), 5041– 5059.
  32. Pastor, A. V., Palazzo, A., Havlik, P., Biemans, H., Wada, Y., Obersteiner, M., Kabat, P., & Ludwig, F. (2019). The global nexus of food–trade–water sustaining environmental flows by 2050. Nature Sustainability, 2(6), 499– 507. 10.1038/s41893-019-0287-1 · DOI
  33. Postel, S. L., Daily, G. C., & Ehrlich, P. R. (1996). Human appropriation of renewable fresh water. Science, 271(5250), 785– 788.
  34. Qin, Y., Mueller, N. D., Siebert, S., Jackson, R. B., AghaKouchak, A., Zimmerman, J. B., Tong, D., Hong, C., & Davis, S. J. (2019). Flexibility and intensity of global water use. Nature Sustainability, 2(6), 515– 523.
  35. Richter, B. D. (2010). Re‐thinking environmental flows: from allocations and reserves to sustainability boundaries. River Research and Applications, 26(8), 1052– 1063.
  36. Richter, B. D., Davis, M. M., Apse, C., & Konrad, C. (2012). A presumptive standard for environmental flow protection. River Research and Applications, 28(8), 1312– 1321.
  37. Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., Chapin, F. S., Lambin, E. F., Lenton, T. M., Scheffer, M., Folke, C., Schellnhuber, H. J., Nykvist, B., De Wit, C. A., Hughes, T., Van Der Leeuw, S., Rodhe, H., Sörlin, S., Snyder, P. K., Costanza, R., Svedin, U., Falkenmark, M., Karlberg, L., Corell, R. W., Fabry, V. J., Hansen, J., Walker, B., Liverman, D., Richardson, K., Crutzen, P., & Foley, J. A. (2009). A safe operating space for humanity. Nature, 461(7263), 472– 475. 10.1038/461472a 19779433 · DOI · Paper page
  38. Schyns, J. F., Hoekstra, A. Y., Booij, M. J., Hogeboom, R. J., & Mekonnen, M. M. (2019). Limits to the world's green water resources for food, feed, fiber, timber, and bioenergy. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201817380. PMC6421454 30804199
  39. Shiklomanov, I. A. (2000). Appraisal and assessment of world water resources. Water International, 25(1), 11– 32.
  40. Smakhtin, V., Revenga, C., & Doll, P. (2004). A pilot global assessment of environmental water requirements and scarcity. Water International, 29(3), 307– 317. 10.1080/02508060408691785 · DOI
  41. Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockstrom, J., Cornell, S. E., Fetzer, I., Bennett, E. M., Biggs, R., Carpenter, S. R., de Vries, W., de Wit, C. A., Folke, C., Gerten, D., Heinke, J., Mace, G. M., Persson, L. M., Ramanathan, V., Reyers, B., & Sorlin, S. (2015). Sustainability. Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet. Science, 347(6223), 1259855. 25592418
  42. Syed, T. H., Famiglietti, J. S., Chambers, D. P., Willis, J. K., & Hilburn, K. (2010). Satellite‐based global‐ocean mass balance estimates of interannual variability and emerging trends in continental freshwater discharge. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(42), 17,916– 17,921. PMC2964215 20921364
  43. Vanham, D., Leip, A., Galli, A., Kastner, T., Bruckner, M., Uwizeye, A., van Dijk, K., Ercin, E., Dalin, C., Brandão, M., Bastianoni, S., Fang, K., Leach, A., Chapagain, A., Van der Velde, M., Sala, S., Pant, R., Mancini, L., Monforti‐Ferrario, F., Carmona‐Garcia, G., Marques, A., Weiss, F., & Hoekstra, A. Y. (2019). Environmental footprint family to address local to planetary sustainability and deliver on the SDGs. Science of the Total Environment, 693, 133642. 31635013 PMC6853168
  44. Vörösmarty, C. J., McIntyre, P. B., Gessner, M. O., Dudgeon, D., Prusevich, A., Green, P., Glidden, S., Bunn, S. E., Sullivan, C. A., Liermann, C. R., & Davies, P. M. (2010). Global threats to human water security and river biodiversity. Nature, 467(7315), 555– 561. 10.1038/nature09440 20882010 · DOI · Paper page
  45. Wada, Y., Florke, M., Hanasaki, N., Eisner, S., Fischer, G., Tramberend, S., Satoh, Y., van Vliet, M. T. H., Yillia, P., Ringler, C., Burek, P., & Wiberg, D. (2016). Modeling global water use for the 21st century: The Water Futures and Solutions (WFaS) initiative and its approaches. Geoscientific Model Development, 9(1), 175– 222.
  46. Wada, Y., Wisser, D., & Bierkens, M. F. P. (2014). Global modeling of withdrawal, allocation and consumptive use of surface water and groundwater resources. Earth System Dynamics, 5(1), 15– 40.
  47. Zhou, X., Yang, Y., Sheng, Z., & Zhang, Y. (2019). Reconstructed natural runoff helps to quantify the relationship between upstream water use and downstream water scarcity in China's river basins. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 23(5), 2491– 2505.
  48. Zhuo, L., Hoekstra, A. Y., Wu, P., & Zhao, X. (2019). Monthly blue water footprint caps in a river basin to achieve sustainable water consumption: The role of reservoirs. Science of the Total Environment, 650(Pt 1), 891– 899. 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.09.090 30308863 · DOI

Cited by

Sorted by citations

  • Restoring Degraded Lands

    Arneth, A., Olsson, L., Cowie, A., Erb, K.-H., Hurlbert, M., Kurz, W. A., Mirzabaev, A., & Rounsevell, M. D. A. (2021) · Annual Review of Environment and Resources · doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-012320-054809 · Cited by 106 · see citing works

    “Rivers On the basis of estimated global blue water runoff (approximately 42,000 km3 a−1), a sustainable level of human use may be 1,200–8,300 km3 a−1 (55), depending on the chosen criteria.”
    Background

Authors
Hogeboom, R. J., de Bruin, D., Schyns, J. F., Krol, M. S., & Hoekstra, A. Y.
Affiliations
  • University of Twente (NL)
  • Twente Water Centre University of Twente Enschede Netherlands
  • National University of Singapore (SG)
Corresponding author
Hogeboom, Rick J.
ORCID
Venue
Earth's Future
Publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Published
2020-02
Volume
8
Issue
2
Pages
e2019EF001363-e2019EF001363
ISSN
2328-4277 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1029/2019ef001363
PMC
PMC7375134
OpenAlex
W2992052532
Cited by
75
References
2
Citations by year
2026: 5 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 1
FWCI
7.13
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Earth s Future (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • University of Twente Research Information (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • National University of Singapore (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • University of Twente Research Information (submittedVersion, other-oa)
Funders
Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (869.15.007)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Ocean Engineering › Water resources management and optimization
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Water Science and Technology › Water Resources and Sustainability
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Environmental Impact and Sustainability
Keywords
river basins, environmental flows, water scarcity, water allocation, seasonal variation, interannual variability, freshwater use, water policy

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review