The water footprint of food

The international trade in agricultural commodities at the same time\ud constitutes a trade with water in virtual form. Water in external areas\ud has been used to produce the food and feed items that are imported.\ud The water footprint of a good or a service is the total amount of water,\ud external and internal, that is required to produce it. The concept can be\ud used to calculate and compare the strain on water resources resulting\ud from different options. It can also be extended to provide water budgets\ud for whole nations or continents

The global dimension of water governance: why the river basin approach is no longer sufficient and why cooperative action at global level is needed

When water problems extend beyond the borders of local communities, the river basin is generally seen as the most appropriate unit for analysis, planning, and institutional arrangements. In this paper it is argued that addressing water problems at the river basin level is not always sufficient. Many of today’s seemingly local water issues carry a (sub)continental or even global dimension, which urges for a governance approach that comprises institutional arrangements at a level beyond that of the river basin. This paper examines a number of arguments for the thesis that good water governance requires a global approach complementary to the river basin approach. Subsequently, it identifies four major issues to be addressed at global scale: Efficiency, equity, sustainability and security of water supply in a globalised world. Finally, the paper raises the question of what kind of institutional arrangements could be developed to cope with the global dimension of water issues. A few possible directions are explored, ranging from an international protocol on full-cost water pricing and a water label for water-intensive products to the implementation of water footprint quotas and the water-neutral concept

Water Scarcity in the Zambezi Basin in the Long-Term Future: A Risk Assessment

The aim of this paper is to explore possible futures for the Zambezi basin and to estimate the risks of different water management strategies. Existing uncertainties are translated into alternative assumptions. The risk of a certain management strategy, which has been developed under a given set of assumptions, is analysed by applying alternative assumptions. For the exploration of possible futures, a dynamic simulation model is used. Three ‘utopias’ and a number of ‘dystopias’ are considered. A utopia is based on a coherent set of assumptions with respect to world-view (how does the world function), management style (how do people respond) and context (exogenous developments). A dystopia evolves if some assumptions are taken differently. Using the risk assessment method described, the paper reflects on the water policy priorities earlier proposed in an expert meeting held in Harare. It is shown that in only one out of the nine cases putting the ‘Harare priorities’ into practice will work out effectively and without large tradeoffs. It is concluded that minimising risks would require a radical shift from supply towards demand policy.\u

The water footprint: a tool for governments, companies and investors

The water footprint of Europe – the total volume of water used for producing all commodities consumed by European citizens – has been significantly externalised to other parts of the world. Europe is for example a large importer of cotton, one of the most thirsty crops. Coffee is imported from Colombia, soybean from Brazil, rice from Thailand, etcetera. European consumption strongly relies on the water resources available outside Europe. Since the pressure on freshwater resources outside Europe is growing, because of population growth, increasing levels of production and climate change, an emerging and vital question is: How sustainable is Europe’s water footprint? Can Europeans continue to rely on water resources elsewhere given the growing number of instances of water overexploitation in some of the places from where Europe imports water-intensive consumer goods? In this paper I address these questions and argue that coping with those questions involves governments, but companies and investors as well

The green, blue and grey water footprint of farm animals and animal products. Volume 2: Appendices

Contents Appendix I: Feed conversion efficiencies – in kg of feed (dry mass) per kg of output – per animal category and region Appendix II: Estimated consumption of feed per animal category and world region (103 ton dry mass/yr) Appendix III. Estimated consumption of feed per production system and world region (103 ton dry mass/yr) Appendix IV. Drinking and service water footprint per animal Appendix V. Water footprint of animals and animal products (m3/ton). Period 1996-200

Managerial satisfaction with subsidiary performance; the influence of the parent MNE's capabilities and the subsidiary's environment

Multinational enterprise performance is one of the most researched topics in the strategic management literature over the last thirty years. Despite the proliferation of studies, the dispute over the relation between firms’ international investment activities and corporate performance has not yet reached a consensus. This paper’s contribution is threefold. First, we focus on entry by West European multinational enterprises into Central and East European countries. Second, we develop a multi-theory argument, combining insights from transaction cost, new institutional, behavioral, resource-based and international strategy theories. Third, we estimate the determinants of managerial satisfaction with subsidiary performance with questionnaire data for a sample of 198 subsidiaries.

Towards an automated query modification assistant

Users who need several queries before finding what they need can benefit from an automatic search assistant that provides feedback on their query modification strategies. We present a method to learn from a search log which types of query modifications have and have not been effective in the past. The method analyses query modifications along two dimensions: a traditional term-based dimension and a semantic dimension, for which queries are enriches with linked data entities. Applying the method to the search logs of two search engines, we identify six opportunities for a query modification assistant to improve search: modification strategies that are commonly used, but that often do not lead to satisfactory results.Comment: 1st International Workshop on Usage Analysis and the Web of Data (USEWOD2011) in the 20th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2011), Hyderabad, India, March 28th, 201

The Mirror DBMS at TREC-8

The database group at University of Twente participates in TREC8 using the Mirror DBMS, a prototype database system especially designed for multimedia and web retrieval. From a database perspective, the purpose has been to check whether we can get sufficient performance, and to prepare for the very large corpus track in which we plan to participate next year. From an IR perspective, the experiments have been designed to learn more about the effect of the global statistics on the ranking