The Water Footprint of Uzbekistan’s Agricultural Products: 1980-2010

In this study, a Water-footprint Assessment Method (WAM) is proposed to assess agricultural water footprint and its flow in Uzbekistan’s agricultural sector. Several findings can be summarized: (i) the annual average water footprint of the agricultural sector is 33.3 billion cubic meters, which is in a downward trend, the main reason is the reduction of crop yield and the improvement of water use efficiency; (ii) the Green Water Footprint (GWF) and Blue Water Footprint (BWF) are 133 and 20 billion cubic meters respectively, cotton contributed most of the BWF, indicating that cotton consumed a lot of surface and groundwater, which indirectly led to the shrinking of the Aral Sea; (iii) an annual average of 3.23 billion m3 of total water footprint (TWF) flows to neighbouring countries such as Russia Federation, China and Bangladesh through agricultural products, accounting for 6.6% of the total water resources of Uzbekistan. These findings will provide theoretical and data support to policy makers for water resources optimization management.