A UNESCO-IHP project involving Brazilian and Italian institutions was carried out since 2005 (a study completed in 2013).
The main goals of the project were: (a) to understand the hydrologic relationships between control and response variables in groundwater systems under the impact of climate change and human activities; (b) to identify mitigation and adaptation measures for groundwater management under those impacts; (c) to evaluate hydrological measures in terms of replicability, sustainability, impacts of both global and regional climate change, and equality in access to groundwater, both in quantitative and qualitative terms.
In addition, the aim was to perform an integrated environmental assessment of agricultural and farming production systems located in the Toledo River Basin. An integrated assessment framework was implemented by using the following methods: Energy Synthesis, Embodied Energy Analysis, Material Flow Accounting, Life Cycle Assessment, Ecological Footprint, Water Footprint, and Carbon Footprint.
Input resources (water, material, energy, and money) invested in supporting such production systems were evaluated with the final goal of calculating a large set of multi-criteria indicators useful to describe the environmental performance and sustainability of the production systems at farm and basin level. Ecological footprint, water and carbon footprints were also assessed. The multi-criteria approach used in this study provided useful information about the interactions and use of natural capital, human-driven resources, and ecosystem services supporting agricultural and farming production systems in the Toledo River basin (Brazil). The outcome of the project provide for a useful benchmark for management and future investigations.