A critical approach on using total water footprint of agricultural products as a potential sustainable development indicator

Abstract

Measuring sustainable development represents a fundamental issue which requires a complex approach in identifying relevant indicators to capture the global transformations of the contemporary economic paradigm, within the context of increasing globalization and of the integration of markets and economies. The recent evolutions of the environmenta lanalysis enforced total water footprint as a highly popular and core environmental performance indicator.The paper presents a critical approach on using total water footprint of agricultural products as a potential sustainable development indicator from the EU perspective, by applying a specific research method on clustering and concentration. The results prove that total water footprint of the agricultural products is highly country-specific dependent. The uneven distribution shown by grouping of countries and types of agricultural products consumption confirm this argument.