The Technical Advisory Group (TAG) for water use has been working diligently to develop the guidelines on water footprinting for livestock supply chains. The mandate of the TAG was to i) provide recommendations to monitor the environmental performance of feed and livestock supply chains over time so that progress towards improvement targets can be measured, ii) be applicable for feed and water demand of small ruminants, poultry, large ruminants and pig supply chains, iii) build on and go beyond the existing FAO LEAP guidelines and iv) pursue alignment with relevant international standards, specifically ISO 14040/14044, and ISO 14046.

The group is composed of 30 international experts who have met for two workshops organized in Rome, Italy and Kigali, Rwanda for consensus building on the different aspects related to water use and potential impacts in livestock supply chains. Several online meetings were subsequently organized by topics to finalize consensus and address all the member’s comments. The draft guidelines on water use assessment includes the impact assessment: the assessment of the environmental performance related to water of a livestock-related system by assessing potential environmental impacts of blue water consumption following the water scarcity footprint according to the framework provided by ISO 14046; and the eco-efficiency assessment through water productivity: the assessment of the water productivity of the system (for example performance tracking purposes), following ISO 14045 and Water Footprint Assessment Manual 2011 (Hoekstra et al., 2011).

This draft has been revised by the LEAP Secretariat, Steering committee and peer-reviewers. After this process, the draft guidelines are officially launched for public review. The public review will last for three months and be completed by 22 August 2018. The LEAP Partnership is grateful for the TAG co-chairs’ and members’ dedication to complete this challenging work.