Corporate social responsibility of regional institutions: save water and money with an ecological economics perspective in a climate change context

As ecological economic fundamentalists argue, we need a new paradigm for changing current global economic system basics. The real problem is that the limits of ecological economics are based on unrealistic or utopian objectives in the proposed research frameworks. Taking this problem into account, present research demonstrates that the combination of mixed methods creates valid results. In this case, the hydrologic footprint reduction method was created to achieve the main objective: to prove the usefulness of combining environmental science techniques along with economics tools. The most important result of the work is the relationships between export/import product balances in the Basque Country, Spain (among the three most important economic regions along with Cataluña and Madrid) and their implications in maximizing effectiveness in saving water and money thanks to external hydrologic footprint analysis. A comparison was made between global and local consumption patterns using the water footprint method. It demonstrated the importance of making small changes, which imply direct and indirect benefits for the economy and hydrologic resources.