Environmental relevance—the key to understanding water footprints

Hoekstra and Mekonnen (1) offered a comprehensive assessment of global water use from the perspective of national production, consumption, and international trade. This study highlighted the often neglected fact that it is the demand for everyday goods and services that places the most pressure on the world’s freshwater systems. As such, strategies based on sustainable consumption and production are needed to reduce humanity’s burden on freshwater and to complement those strategies that operate at the watershed or water resource level.