Assessing the water scarcity footprint of food crops by growing season available water remaining (AWARE) characterization factors in Thailand

Water scarcity problems are a national agenda that must be prioritized. Thailand is an agricultural country with agriculture consuming a large amount of water. Sustainable water management for the agricultural sector is urgently needed. This study assessed the impacts of water consumption by agricultural products using a water scarcity footprint (WSF) assessment. This study presents the use of the growing season available water remaining characterization factors (AWARE CFs) of specific crops, based on growth months of that crop, instead of the annual AWARE CFs of agricultural products to assess the value of this approach for an appropriate assessment of water resource and the planning of crop production priorities. The original marginal AWARE CF was considered for determining the growing season AWARE CFs of major rice, second rice, sugarcane, maize, and cassava in 25 Thai watersheds. The growing season AWARE CFs of the food crops were used to determine their WSFs for the 25 Thai watersheds. The growing season AWARE CFs of major rice, second rice, sugarcane, maize, and cassava for Thailand were 1.74, 11.5, 6.01, 3.28, and 7.96 m³ world-eq. per m³ consumed, respectively. There were statistical differences between the means of annual AWARE CFs and growing season AWARE CFs for all Thai food crops in almost all watersheds. The WSFs using growing season AWARE CFs of major rice, second rice, sugarcane, maize, and cassava were 0.05-3.66, 1.10-193, 0.51-7.99, 1.09-8.28, and 1.65-30.3 m³ world-eq. per kilogram, respectively. This work identified suitable watersheds for growing food crops and compiled them as databases for the use of zoning food crop cultivation by the Thai government. Regarding WSF values, the least suitable watershed for growing major rice, second rice, sugarcane, and cassava was the Petchaburi watershed. The least suitable watershed for growing maize was the Chao Phraya watershed.

Updating and Road-testing Life Cycle Inventory Data Review Criteria: Toward Global Consensus and Guidance On Data Quality Assessment

Data quality of life cycle inventory background databases should be ensured in order to be useful for life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. However, databases do not always have procedures to evaluate the quality of the data sets in place. The Global Guidance Principles for LCA Databases of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in collaboration with the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) provide, among others, recommendations to enhance data quality through improved documentation and review. Flagship 2a in Phase 3 of the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative aimed to enable the practical implementation of these recommendations with the development of review criteria and the testing of these criteria on 3 national databases. After a pilot-testing phase, this project entered a more mature road-testing exercise, of which the results are presented in this paper. The review criteria have been updated and provide more emphasis on goal and scope documentation completeness and include a new cluster of criteria that evaluate the materiality of the data set. The updated criteria have been applied to national databases of Thailand, Australia, and Chile. All databases would benefit from additional documentation, for example, on system boundaries, the reference model, sampling procedures, and cut-off criteria. Furthermore, conducting the review was enabled by extensive documentation and data accessibility in LCA software. Communication of the criteria to the database managers enabled them to anticipate data quality requirements of the global LCA community and improve the data sets in advance. Reviewers sometimes had a different interpretation of the criteria, which suggests that there is room for additional fine-tuning of the process guidance and exemplification of review criteria. This project has demonstrated that the criteria are applicable to and provide useful feedback for databases with different levels of maturity and contribute to improving quality of life cycle inventory (LCI) data. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2020;16:517-524. © 2020 SETAC.

Improving regional water scarcity footprint characterization factors of an available water remaining (AWARE) method

Increasing water demand and decreasing freshwater availability in an area can cause water scarcity leading to damage to human health, ecosystem quality, and natural resources. Many countries around the world, including Thailand, have recognized the importance of this problem. The available water remaining (AWARE) characterization model provides water scarcity footprint characterization factors (WSF CFs) for assessing the WSF of products. AWARE CFs were prepared from WaterGAP model's data and are available in watershed and country levels. They were not provided for specific areas and could not accurately explain water scarcity situations in certain regions, potentially leading to inappropriate water management. This work calculates the annual and monthly local CFs from local data in the Chao Phraya watershed in Thailand. The monthly local CFs with local environmental water requirement (EWR) calculations ranged from 0.10 to 100. The mean difference between AWARE CFs and local CFs was statistically significant. The most sensitive parameters for local CFs in the dry season were water availability (WA) and agricultural water consumption and that in the wet season was WA. The weighting of AWARE CFs by each type of water consumption and an aggregate of AWARE CFs for product production has been recommended for WSF assessment. The AWARE methodology was modified to assess the individual water scarcity of each water user based on the order of priority. For the Chao Phraya watershed, the ranges of the monthly local individual CFs using local EWR calculations of domestic, environment, livestock, agriculture, and industry were 0.10-0.33, 0.10-0.37, 0.10-0.37, 0.10-100, and 0.10-100, respectively. This assessment of individual water scarcity is helpful for prioritizing the level and timing of water use to minimize their impacts on critical water scarcity.

Water footprints of products of oil palm plantations and palm oil mills in Thailand

The water footprint (WF) of fresh fruit bunches (FFBs) from oil palm plantations and crude palm oil (CPO) from palm oil mills in southern and eastern Thailand were determined over 25 years. Climatic conditions, soil characteristics, and the characteristics of oil palm growth were considered. The WF of FFBs was 1063 m(3)/ton (t) on average. Green, blue, and grey waters comprised of 68, 18, and 14% of total WF, respectively. The oil palm plantations in Thailand required smaller amounts of indirect blue water. The average WF for producing a ton of CPO of seven mills was 5083 m(3). Most of the waters used in the mills originated from indirect green, blue and grey waters from the plantations. The direct blue water used in the mills had less impact on the total WF, lower than 1% of the total WF. Average percentages of green, blue, and grey waters of 69, 16, and 15% of total WF were determined for the mills, respectively. The water deprivation of the FFBs and CPO ranged from 0.73-12.9 and 3.44-58.3 m(3)H2Oeq/t, respectively. In 2013, the CPO production in Thailand including green, blue, and grey waters from plantation and blue water from mills required 11,343 million m(3) water. If the oil palm variety Suratthani 7 is used in the plantation, it would increase the yield from 15.2 to 22.8 t FFBs/ha-year and decrease the WF to 888 m(3)/t FFBs. The average value of the oil extraction rate (OER) of mills was 18.1%. With an increase in the OER of 1%, a reduction of the WF of 250 m(3)/t CPO or 5.1% of total WF could be obtained.