Food consumption patterns and their effect on water requirement in China

By Junguo Liu, H. Savenije. 2008

243 citations recorded by the source corpus.

It is widely recognized that food consumption patterns significantly impact water requirements. The aim of this paper is to quantify how food consumption patterns influence water requirements in China. The findings show that per capita water requirement for food (CWRF) has increased from 255 m3 cap-1y?1 in 1961 to 860 m3 cap-1 y?1 in 2003, largely due to an increase in the consumption of animal products in recent decades. Although steadily increasing, the CWRF of China is still much lower than that of many developed countries. The total water requirement for food (TWRF) has been determined as 1127 km3 y-1 in 2003. Three scenarios are proposed to project future TWRF, representing low, medium, and high levels of modernization (S1, S2, and S3, respectively). Analysis of these three scenarios indicates that TWRF will likely continue to increase in the next three decades. An additional amount of water ranging between 407 and 515 km3 y-1 will be required in 2030 compared to the TWRF in 2003. This will undoubtedly put high pressure on China's already scarce water resources. We conclude that the effect of the food consumption patterns on China's water resources is substantial both in the recent past and in the near future. China will need to strengthen "green water" management and to take advantage of "virtual water" import to meet the additional TWRF

Subfields: Environmental Engineering, Ocean Engineering, Water Science and Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b22474bf5b4e5c22bb1fff7a29d682d1d1b2b8c3

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Citations in the corpus

On the merits of plant-based proteins for global food security: Marrying macro and micro perspectives (2011, background): “However, the former group is growing rapidly as a result of booming economies, such as those of China, India and Brazil, with obvious impacts on future freshwater availability worldwide (Liu and Savenije, 2008; Ye and van Ranst, 2009).”
The future of food — Scenarios and the effect on natural resource use in agriculture in 2050 (2014, background): “Several (scenario) studies concerning agriculture and natural resources use have been done (e.g. Bruinsma, 2009; Ewert et al., 2005; Liu and Savenije, 2008; Rosegrant et al., 2001a; Tilman et al., 2001; Wirsenius et al., 2010).”
Evolving water science in the Anthropocene (2013, background): “The global character of the hydrological cycle and the economics of water urge for institutional arrangements at the global level as well, in addition to arrangements at local, national and river basin level.”
National water footprint accounts: the green, blue and grey water footprint of production and consumption (2011, background): “…footprint studies with a focus on a specific country were published in the past few years: Vincent et al. (2011) for Belgium; Ma et al. (2006), Liu and Savenije (2008), Hubacek et al. (2009) and Zhao et al. (2009) for China; Sonnenberg et al. (2009) for Germany; Kampman et al. (2008) for…”
Agricultural trade and virtual land use: The case of China's crop trade (2013, methodology): “This framework has been enhanced by employing factors on local productivities to quantify and locate the embodied Ecological Footprint in trade flows (McDonald and Patterson, 2004; Moran et al., 2009; Kissinger and Gottlieb, 2010; Kissinger and Rees, 2010; Ferng, 2011).”
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): “A relevant question is how China and India are going to feed themselves in the future [59,92].”
A spatially explicit assessment of current and future hotspots of hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa in the context of global change (2008, background): “Data on EC are obtained from FAO (2006a) and the values of the six crops are reported in Liu and Savenije (2008).”
China's Environmental Challenges and Implications for the World (2010, background): “114 The demand is still rising rapidly and may increasingly depend on “virtual water” (water supplies in other countries that are in effect transferred to China through food importation).”
Virtual Water: A Helpful Perspective, but not a Sufficient Policy Criterion (2010, background): “Allan (2003) states that “virtual water is something of a descendant of the concept of comparative advantage,” while Lant (2003) suggests that “like comparative advantage, virtual water is also an application of basic principles of economic geography,” which recommend that economic activities requ”
Future protein supply (2011, background): “However, the former group is growing rapidly as a result of booming economies, such as those of China, India and Brazil, with obvious impacts on future freshwater availability worldwide (Myers & Kent, 2003; Croft et al., 2008; Liu et al., 2008; Liu & Savenije, 2008; Ye & Van Ranst, 2009). page 11”