International Water Management Institute (IWMI)

This film was shot and roughly edited by a group of Nepali women from the Terai region as part of a participatory video project conducted by IWMI in 2013. It presents women’s points of view on how male migration overseas has been affecting their …

Water footprints measure the amount of water consumed or applied in the production of a good or service. A single cup of coffee, for example, has a water foot print of 140 liters of water. The concept is widely publicized and is now beginning to influence government policy. But according Dennis Wichelns, professor at the Institute of Water Policy National University of Singapore, that is a mistake. The problem, he argues, is that this measure looks only at the water input for particular products, and takes no account of other factors that may be more relevant to sustainable resource use. [...]

Water productivity – the amount of a crop produced per unit water – is a much used measurement. A quick search for the phrase on Google Scholar yields nearly 18,000 citations. So it is popular, but is it of any use? Former IWMI Deputy Director General, Dennis Wichelns, thinks it may not be. He believes that to distil crop production down to merely the amount of water used leaves a lot of important information out of the picture. Fertilizer, seeds, plant intakes, labor and unpredictable influences like the weather all play their part, but are ignored by such a simplistic [...]