AWARE (Available Water Remaining)

AWARE (Available Water Remaining) is a characterisation method for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) that weights the impact of water consumption according to how much water remains available in the local river basin after the needs of humans and ecosystems are met. The same volume of water consumed counts as a far greater impact in a water-scarce basin than in a water-abundant one.

AWARE was developed as a consensus model by the WULCA working group, hosted under the UN Environment Programme life cycle initiative, to harmonise the many competing water scarcity indicators into a single agreed method. It is the recommended approach for the water scarcity footprint and is used in the EU Product Environmental Footprint (PEF).

How the AWARE factor is calculated

The method starts from the Availability Minus Demand (AMD) in a given area and period: the renewable water available, minus the water required by human activities and by aquatic ecosystems. This local value is compared with the world average and inverted, so the factor expresses how scarce water is locally relative to the global average.

• A higher factor means water is scarcer and each cubic metre consumed has a larger impact.
• The resulting characterisation factor is bounded between 0.1 and 100.
• Factors are calculated at sub-watershed level and monthly time step, and can be aggregated to country or annual values, with separate aggregations for agricultural and for domestic or industrial use.

The factor is then multiplied by the volume of water consumed (in cubic metres) at each life cycle stage to obtain the water scarcity footprint.

Interpreting the factor

As a rough guide, low factors (close to 1 or below) indicate basins where water is relatively abundant, mid-range factors indicate moderate scarcity, and high factors (towards the upper end of the scale) indicate basins under severe water stress where consumption should be minimised. The exact factor for any location is taken from the published AWARE datasets rather than estimated.

Advantages over earlier indicators

• Global coverage with a single, internationally agreed method.
• It accounts for the water needed to maintain minimum environmental flows and protect biodiversity, not only human demand.
• It is compatible with ISO 14046 and with the PEF methodology.

Business applications

• Identifying where in a value chain water use causes the greatest impact.
• Prioritising water replenishment and efficiency projects in high-scarcity basins.
• Designing products to reduce water impact where it matters most.
• Supporting context-based water reporting to frameworks such as CDP Water Disclosure.

AWARE turns a simple volume of water into a measure of real local pressure, enabling companies to act where the impact is genuinely critical. At Manglai we help companies measure their environmental footprint and prepare their sustainability reporting with rigorous, verifiable data. Discover how Manglai can help you.