Social Life Cycle Assessment of Mexico City's Water Cycle

Abstract

AbstractThere is a need to generate micro‐scale indicators to measure progress towards meeting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 6 and 8. In this sense, this study applies Social Life Cycle Assessment, including Quality of Employment (QoE) and Adequate Public Water Supply (AWS) indicators to assess the social performance of Mexico City's water cycle to identify the level (low, medium and high) of the potential risk of social impact (PR). The results show that the labor hours (WH) required by 1m3 of water in Mexico City is equivalent to 0.062 WH. The QoE indicator shows that 94% of WH are associated with high PR due to low wages. For AWS, 5% is associated with a high PR for local communities in the Cutzamala system due to poor water quality and consumption of bottled water. This case study demonstrates that progress on QoE and AWS indicators can significantly contribute to achieving SDGs 6 and 8 in the water management of communities involved in Mexico City's water cycle.