Water saving through international trade of agricultural products

By A. Chapagain, Arjen Y. Hoekstra, H. Savenije. 2005

413 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Many nations save domestic water resources by importing water-intensive products and exporting commodities that are less water intensive. National water saving through the import of a product can imply saving water at a global level if the flow is from sites with high to sites with low water productivity. The paper analyses the consequences of international virtual water flows on the global and national water budgets. The assessment shows that the total amount of water that would have been required in the importing countries if all imported agricultural products would have been produced domestically is 1605 Gm3/yr. These products are however being produced with only 1253 Gm3/yr in the exporting countries, saving global water resources by 352 Gm3/yr. This saving is 28 per cent of the international virtual water flows related to the trade of agricultural products and 6 per cent of the global water use in agriculture. National policy makers are however not interested in global water savings but in the status of national water resources. Egypt imports wheat and in doing so saves 3.6 Gm3/yr of its national water resources. Water use for producing export commodities can be beneficial, as for instance in Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana and Brazil, where the use of green water resources (mainly through rain-fed agriculture) for the production of stimulant crops for export has a positive economic impact on the national economy. However, export of 28 Gm3/yr of national water from Thailand related to rice export is at the cost of additional pressure on its blue water resources. Importing a product which has a relatively high ratio of green to blue virtual water content saves global blue water resources that generally have a higher opportunity cost than green water.

Subfields: Environmental Engineering, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6844284901b0bbad6a4134a22ffbc80016e50c3e

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Citations in the corpus

Evolving water science in the Anthropocene (2013, background): “Finally, good water governance is not only the responsibility of the public sector – the private sector can and should play a significant role as well.”
National water footprint accounts: the green, blue and grey water footprint of production and consumption (2011, background): “…footprints of nations was carried out by Hoekstra and Hung (2002); a second, much more comprehensive study, was done by Hoekstra and Chapagain and reported in a number of subsequent publications: Chapagain and Hoekstra (2004, 2008), Chapagain et al. (2006) and Hoekstra and Chapagain (2007a, 2008).”
Socio‐hydrology: Use‐inspired water sustainability science for the Anthropocene (2014, positive): “Socio-hydrology builds upon previous work by incorporating impacts of decentralized human agents and institutions to water flows and storages, as well as their feedbacks.”
The Global Dimension of Water Governance: Why the River Basin Approach Is No Longer Sufficient and Why Cooperative Action at Global Level Is Needed (2010, background): “[71] took a more comprehensive approach and looked at the global water saving as a result of international trade in all agricultural products, including”
Global virtual water trade and the hydrological cycle: patterns, drivers, and socio-environmental impacts (2019, background): “…et al 2009) Groundwater depletion embedded in crop trade 25 2010 (Dalin et al 2017) Water savings through trade 220 2007 (Dalin et al 2012a) 352 1997–2001 (Chapagain et al 2006) Food aid 10 2005 (Jackson et al 2015) Water grabbing (appropriation through land investments) 380 2013 (Rulli…”
Water for food: The global virtual water trade network (2011, background): “We find that the number of trade connections follows an exponential distribution, except for the case of import trade relationships, while the volume of water that each nation trades compares well with a stretched exponential distribution, indicating high heterogeneity of flows between nations.”
Human appropriation of natural capital: A comparison of ecological footprint and water footprint analysis (2009, background): “An important question all the time is where and how nations or the global society as a whole can save water (Hoekstra, 2003; Oki and Kanae, 2004; De Fraiture et al. 2004; Wichelns, 2004; Hoekstra and Hung, 2005; Chapagain et al., 2006a ).”
“Virtual water”: An unfolding concept in integrated water resources management (2007, background): “The reported volume of water saving in the global trade of major crops and livestock products ranges between 300 km 3 a 1 and 600 km 3 a 1 [Zimmer and Renault, 2003; Oki and Kanae, 2004; Hoekstra and Hung, 2005; Yang et al., 2006; Chapagain et al., 2006a ].”
The water footprints of Morocco and the Netherlands: Global water use as a result of domestic consumption of agricultural commodities (2007, methodology): “The most comprehensiveandelaboratedframeworkforanalysiscurrently available is the one developed by the authors of this paper (Chapagain and Hoekstra, 2004, in press; Chapagain et al., 2006a, b; Hoekstra and Chapagain, 2007).”