“Water Footprint” and Territorial Sustainability in Spain.

Abstract

The research carried out highlights the importance of environmental integration in the economic policies of countries worldwide and of the members of the European Union, in general, and of a country of contrasts, especially in terms of the enormous natural wealth, such as Spain. All this without forgetting that environmental problems have dimensions of an extra economic nature, a consequence of the incidence of the ecological crisis that does not allow Science Economy itself to provide total solutions to these problems, Legal Economics and more especially Policies—by instruments and norms—allow the design of unconventional situations or strategies that need to redistribute scarce natural resources such as water, among various alternative uses. In this way, the failure of the market to generate and promote an optimal allocation, in “Paretian” terms, of natural resources is clearly evident, with the appearance of indicators such as the “Water Footprint” gaining special relevance. Understood as “the volume of water required to produce goods or services”, it allows to quantify the water necessary for the production of goods and services, as well as the amount of available water resources, as well as the use of territory necessary for this purpose (in our case Spain). In our research, a detailed study is carried out of the demands of “Virtual Water” in the different economic sectors that make up the Spanish economy. The present study aims to make an estimate of their “Water Footprint”, both economically and environmentally, making a detailed territorial projection on the repercussions that this demand for water resources has on said territory.