Water is under increasing pressure for supporting both various functions in society whilst sustaining healthy ecosystem services (ESS) in landscapes. These pressures impacts human well-being, and there is a growing need to consider the productivity of how water can be used for multiple benefits. Water productivity is a concept used to assess water use and resource efficiency. However, due
to the multiple uses of water by humans and ecosystems, it is not evident that one measure of efficiency can capture the multifaceted and multi-sectoral benefits that water provides. By using water productively at one scale of space and time, important functions of water flows at other levels of use and demand, or disparities in the beneficiaries of water flows between men versus women, or wealthy versus poor. Finally, it is particularly important to consider water productivity in terms of the trade-offs
between managed agricultural ESS and the surrounding landscape ESS. Resource efficiency must refer to a broad web of ESS, including agro-ecosystem services. Human well-being has the potential to be greatly improved via the mainstreaming of activities that address water flows and efficiencies in landscape ESS, particularly for facilitating a transition to a Green Economy.

Report by UN Environment Programme