WATER USE IN LCA Applying water scarcity footprint methodologies to milk production in Finland Kirsi Usva 1 & Eetu Virtanen 2 & Helena Hyvärinen 1 & Jouni Nousiainen 1 & Taija Sinkko 1 & Sirpa Kurppa 1 Received: 5 January 2018 /Accepted: 22 July 2018 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Purpose Food production without consuming scarce local freshwater resources in an unsustainable way needs to be ensured. A robust method to assess water scarcity impacts is needed, not only for areas suffering from water scarcity but also in circum- stances without water scarcity. This study provides basic knowledge about the current water scarcity footprint methodologies applied to rain-fed agriculture, with Finnish milk production as a case study. Methods A typical Finnish Bcradle-to-dairy^ milk production system was studied. An improved allocation method is suggested taking into account that a lactating cow consumes more drinking water due to milk production. Impact assessment methodolo- gies, including midpoint impact indicators of water deprivation and water scarcity, and the endpoint impact indicators on human health, ecosystems and resources, were applied and evaluated. Results and discussion Finnish milk is associated with quite low consumptive water use, amounting to just 6.3 l per litre of packaged skimmed milk according to the suggested allocation method. The stress-weighted water footprint was 4.3 H 2 O eq , and the water scarcity impact came to 12.2 l eq per litre of Finnish milk. The comparisons between this study and case studies in the literature showed that the water scarcity impact results calculated with the AWARE method are well reasoned, and that mass flows from regions with high water scarcity cause higher water scarcity impact. Conclusions We conclude that the water scarcity footprint of Finnish milk in all the studied impact categories is relatively low. The AWARE method for water scarcity footprint assessment seems to be particularly applicable for Finland and is able to identify the critical hotspots of production chains. Keywords Dairy farms . Environmental impact . Food products . LCA . Life cycle assessment . Water availability . Water footprint . Water in LCA 1 Introduction The global water crisis requires researchers to incorporate wa- ter issues into the environmental impact assessments of prod- ucts, particularly food products, the production of which rep- resents most of the world’ s water consumption. According to Shiklomanov and Rodda ( 2003), 66% of world water withdrawals and 86% of its consumption are used for agricul- ture. Locally, the share of agriculture is much lower in devel- oped countries and in areas with rain-fed agriculture. This also depends heavily on whether imported foodstuffs are taken into account. In Finland, agriculture is rain-fed, and the share of water consumption for agriculture is only 3%, while domestic use comprises 25% of water withdrawals and industrial with- drawal accounts for 72% (FAO 2013). Only about 23% of Finland’ s freshwater consumption (freshwater technically abstracted from nature and consumed by humans) is based on national water resources, while the rest is based on the virtual water content of imported products (Mekonnen and Hoekstra 2011). A decade ago, it was forecast by Shiklomanov and Rodda (2003) that in 2025 about 30–35% of the world’ s population will live in areas where water availability is very low or Responsible editor: Stephan Pfister * Kirsi Usva kirsi.usva@luke.fi 1 Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), Myllytie 1, 31600 Jokioinen, Finland 2 Soilfood ltd, Ratakatu 1b A 5, 00120 Helsinki, Finland The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-018-1512-2