Weak and strong sustainability indicators, and regional environmental resources



Weak and Strong Sustainability Indicators, and Regional Environmental Resources

Each Austrian citizen uses 150 l/d (communal water supply) while industry, agriculture and
thermal power stations use additional 1.350 l/d.c.2 It cannot be said whether the environmental
space of each Austrian for using water resources is injured by the actual use of totally 1.500
l/d.c (for all numbers see Hüttler and Payer, 1994). However, these numbers show that not
only the use of water resources and industries have to be taken into account, but every use of
water resources (e. g. as cooling medium in power stations, carrier of kinetic energy used in
hydro-electric power plants) has to considered from a sustainability viewpoint. If we sum up
all materials and energy used in the Austrian economy („material throughput“) around 80 % of
all material flows through the Austrian economy is water (measured in tons). As the sus-
tainability criteria show defining the environmental space for water resources cannot easily be
done: the regional situations within Austria must be taken into account (e. g. water extraction
in the „Marchfeld“, an area with few rain but intensive groundwater uses, might be not sus-
tainable while extracting the same amount of water near the Danube river would be sustainable;
see above on some more concrete numbers).

The development of water saving strategies especially in cities have their origin in the regional
characteristics of the quantity and quality of the regionally existing and usable water resources.
The most sophisticated water saving strategies have been consequently adopted by those cit-
ies whose water resources are scarce (e. g. many major German cities like Hamburg, Frankfurt
or Berlin depending on ground water for drinking purposes are good examples for feasible and
effective water saving strategies).

5 Case Study: Legal Approach and Regional Problems Towards Sustainability

Some of the above mentioned sustainability criteria for the use of water resources are legally
set to force by the Austrian federal law on water resources („Wasserrechtsgesetz“, 1959).
Interestingly, although Austria is that rich of water resources, it has one of the most stringent
water pollution acts in Europe. One basic legal rule is that every use of water, be it the extrac-
tion of groundwater or the discharge of sewage, has to be limited according to the state of the

2 „l/d.c“ denotes the consumption of water (in liters) per day (d) and per capita (c).

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