[3] Hoekstra earned an MSc degree in Civil Engineering and a PhD in Policy Analysis from Delft University of Technology.

[5][2] As a professor, Hoekstra taught subjects such as: sustainable development, hydrology, natural resource valuation, environmental systems, and policy analysis.

[4] Throughout his career, Hoekstra's work gained international media attention and he was consistently referred to as an expert on the topic of water resource issues.

A water footprint can be calculated for any well-defined group of consumers (e.g., an individual, family, village, city, province, state or nation) or producers (e.g., a public organization, private enterprise or economic sector), for a single process (such as growing rice) or for any product or service.

[15] Thus, it gives a grasp on how economic choices and processes influence the availability of adequate water resources and other ecological realities across the globe (and vice versa).