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While economic and environmental policies and strategies are largely designed at the international, national or regional level, the environmental impacts of these measures are often felt at a more geographically-localized level. In particular, the effects on water resources, especially regarding water pollution and water stress, are usually localized in very specific hotspots. In this work, we acknowledge these facts and attempt to identify the linkages among the 17 regions in Spain (a semi-arid country with significant geographical variations in water availability), the European Union (EU), and the Rest of the World (RW), while also looking at the local effects of those interactions. In particular, we study the grey water footprints (a measure of the assimilation capacity of water resources) of production, at both the regional and business level, with spatially explicit information, and the extension of those footprints throughout the supply chain, while also computing the water footprints of consumption at the regional level. This process is a combination of a detailed computation of grey water footprints from production, from agriculture (from diffuse pollution), and from more general economic activities (from point source pollution), with a multiregional input–output model that encompasses the 17 Spanish Regions, the EU, and the RW. We also identify hotspots and vulnerable areas, linking the grey water footprints from production originating in these areas to final-consumer responsibilities. As an example of the potential of the combined methodology, we design and evaluate the effects on grey water footprints of scenarios of import substitutions in Spain. Our results show strong final demand in regions such as Madrid and Catalonia, and in net exporting regions such as Andalusia, Aragon, Castile and Leon, Castile-La Mancha, Extremadura, and Navarre. Some of these regions contain areas that are clearly vulnerable to nitrates and other pollutants, and parts of these regions, most obviously in Andalusia and Extremadura, suffer water stress, which leads us to question the sustainability of the relationships between the structure of production and trade and the environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many situations, the overuse of natural resources is aggravated by illegal use. More insights on the drivers and significance of this phenomenon are needed in order to formulate policies that can effectively ease human pressure on the environment. This paper makes use of the water footprint (WF), as a physical indicator of freshwater use, and introduces both economic (water productivity) and social (labour intensity) indicators to understand illegal groundwater use from a multiple perspective. Using data from the year 2000 and from 2007 to 2009, we analyse in detail the case of the Western Mancha Aquifer, in central Spain, where legal and illegal groundwater use take place simultaneously. Results show that nearly 52% of the agricultural blue WF is linked to illegal groundwater use, mostly for vine and vegetable irrigation. Besides this, the illegal share accounts for around 56% and 57% respectively of the gross income and employment generated by irrigation in the area. Therefore, although action to halt illegal withdrawals is a recurrent call to ease pressure on natural resources and ecosystems, these figures reflect the economic and social drivers, which might explain why such action is difficult to implement. In addition, the data presented in this paper provides new insights into some aspects of a public plan recently implemented to regularize illegal use by purchasing and reallocating groundwater rights on the basis of social and environmental grounds, which might be relevant for future public policy measures in situations presenting both over-allocation of water rights and illegal water use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More efficient and sustainable use of water is increasingly becoming an urgency in drought prone parts of the world. In particular, in water scarce regions such as the Mediterranean, water supply is expected to become more uncertain because of climate change. Consequently, pro-active policy initiatives are proposed to increase supply reliability. Local context is important when the effectiveness of policies is assessed. The aim of this paper is to evaluate farmers’ acceptance of policy strategies to increase water supply reliability in the Segura, a water scarce river basin in the south-east of Spain. Results from a choice experiment suggest that farmers are willing to pay twice as much as their current irrigation water price to ensure water supply reliability through government supply guaranteed programs. However, they are averse to any institutional changes that might assist the government to achieve increased water supply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]