As we have seen so far considering worldwide the meat production, there are two main issues regarding the water footprint analysis:

• the large amount of green water in the total value does not necessarily mean that it causes an equally high environmental impact. Although the overall water footprint value is composed mainly of green water it actually indicates a high level of compatibility between culture and meteoclimatic area and very little is used as irrigation water;
• the blue component should be correlated with local scarcity in order to assess the sustainability of the product under investigation. In fact, the impact of drawing blue water from a specific area depends on the availability of blue water in that area.

One way of overcoming the second issue would be to correlate the values of blue water with water availability in the regions involved in the process under analysis. This is obviously much more complex since it requires in-depth knowledge and the elaboration of a large amount of information.

There are various methods for doing this which all originate from the concept of water scarcity (defined as the inability to obtain adequate amounts of water in respect to the needs) and water availability (that is the actual availability of water accessible both from a qualitative and quantative perspective).

Among the most widespread methods of calculation there is one relating to water resource depletion, developed by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, which is responsible for assessing to what extent water consumption in a particular geographic area actually effects the exhaustion of water resources in that area.

The European Commission promotes this method as part of its initiatives for the environmental footprinting of products (PEF, Product Environmental Footprint) and organizations (OEF, Organization Environmental Footprint).

The calculation is based on factors provided by the “Ecological Scarcity” method and is expected to multiply the consumption of water of the process under study (in our case blue water) by a characterization factor obtained from the ratio between total consumption and availability in the reference area (low, medium and high). The indicator is expressed in terms of equivalent volumes of water and is based on the factors listed in the study by Frischknecht et al.

For “The sustainability of meat and cured meats in Italy” Report we decided to use the method suggested by the JRC with the aim of “weighing” the blue water footprint values. The analysis is to be considered preliminary as it is based on the assumption, not always correct, that the entire supply chain (cultivation, livestock breeding and processing) is developed in the area under study and that therefore all of the blue water of the final product is consumed in the same nation.

This “weighing” enables us to correlate the withdrawal of blue water with the actual “damage” caused to the water availability of a given geographical area. In regions with water shortage issues such as India, the meat supply chains actually impact to the extent that the “weighted” water footprint is actually greater than calculated. Whereas when the supply chain is located in areas with abundant water availability, there is less environmental damage such as in Argentina or Ireland which both produce large quantities of meat.

The Sustainable Meat Project