ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the water footprint as a tool in measuring water sustainability. It presents ways to use this concept in environmental management, monitoring and education based on scenarios and practices founded on sound science. The water footprint is a measurement of the overall quantity of water consumed in the creation of goods and services. This involves computing the sum of the direct and indirect water usage of an individual, institution, a country or the whole world. Water footprints are more comprehensive measures of water usage than simply tracking water withdrawals by the different sectors in the economy. They help consumers fully appreciate the value of water as resource. This chapter quantifies how food consumption patterns influence water supply in the Philippines, and shows that changing food consumption patterns may become one of the major causes of scarcity of water in the near future. It also demonstrates how to introduce the water footprint concept using an MS Excel-based calculator as an experiential approach to education for water management. These tools expose the learners to their total water demand and the effect of their own consumption patterns on the global or national water supply.
