63209 20200221144321.0 doi 10.1111/jiec.12454 sideral 100326 ART-2016-100326 eng (orcid)0000-0001-6991-7915 Serrano, A. Universidad de Zaragoza Virtual water flows in the EU27: A consumption based approach 2016 Access copy available to the general public Unrestricted The use of water resources has traditionally been studied by accounting for the volume of water removed from sources for specific uses. This approach focuses on surface and groundwater only and it ignores that international trade of products with substantial amounts of embodied water can have an impact on domestic water resources. Using current economic and environmental data, we conduct a consumption-based assessment of virtual water flows in the European Union (EU27). We find that the total water footprint (WF) of 2, 280 cubic meters (m3) per capita for the EU27 mostly consists of green water use (precipitation stored as soil moisture), which is omitted in the conventional water accounting. Blue water (surface and groundwater.) and gray water use (the volume of freshwater needed to dilute pollutants to meet the applicable water quality standards), which are targeted by current EU water policies, only make up 32% of the total WF. We also find that Europeans imported 585 cubic kilometers (km3) (109 m3) of virtual water, or around 28% of global virtual water trade flows, in 2009. Within Europe, Germany is a key net importer of water through the trade of products in agriculture, the food industry, the chemical sector, and electricity generation. Countries in Southern and Eastern Europe have specialized in water-intensive agriculture and are key exporters of virtual water despite experiencing physical scarcity of water. Our results suggest that there is a need to reconsider water policy in the EU to address water transfers occurring through trade and to grasp the interlinkages between green, blue, and gray water—which are likely to become more important in water-scarce parts of Europe, with a changing climate. info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/MINECO/ECO2013-41353-P info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/ES/DGA/S10 info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess by http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ 4.123 2016 ENGINEERING, ENVIRONMENTAL 10 / 49 = 0.204 2016 Q1 T1 GREEN & SUSTAINABLE SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 8 / 31 = 0.258 2016 Q2 T1 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES 34 / 229 = 0.148 2016 Q1 T1 1.302 2016 Economics and Econometrics 2016 Q1 Social Sciences (miscellaneous) 2016 Q1 Environmental Science (miscellaneous) 2016 Q1 info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion Guan, D. (orcid)0000-0003-3113-1698 Duarte, R. Universidad de Zaragoza Paavola, J. 4000 415 Universidad de Zaragoza Dpto. Análisis Económico Área Fund. Análisis Económico 20, 3 (2016), 547-558 JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY 1088-1980 1238114 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/63209/files/texto_completo.pdf Versión publicada 85870 http://zaguan.unizar.es/record/63209/files/texto_completo.jpg?subformat=icon icon Versión publicada oai:zaguan.unizar.es:63209 articulos driver 2020-02-21-13:41:37 ARTICLE