A framework assessing the footprints of food consumption. An application on water footprint in Europe

Innovative sustainable food systems should be defined to meet the future food demand (both in terms of quality and quantity) and to overcome the threats that current food systems are posing to the natural capital. To achieve this ambitious goal, the transition to sustainable food habits should be supported by methodological frameworks and modelling tools promoting human and environmental health. The proposed framework provided a standardized system-based approach for the analysis of environmental impacts of food systems, assessed in terms of use of natural resources (water and ecological footprint) and GHG emissions (carbon footprint). The framework is applied to the assessment of water footprint of cradle-to-gate European food consumption, resulting in an average water footprint consumption of 3291 (±557) litre (per day per person). The case study showed the potentiality of our framework as a support tool for policy making in designing specific incentives for the reduction of environmental impacts related to the agri-food sector, as well as in the evaluation of agronomic strategies in the light of pursuing the environmental sustainability of food commodities production. The main novelty presented in the case study is to use food consumption data coming from surveys harmonized across European countries to assess the real food demand.