What is virtual water?
Virtual water is a form of footprinting that measures the amount of water required to produce an item. In doing so, it captures the hidden or embedded flows of water. For example, consuming a standard cup of coffee (125ml) requires 140 litres of water – a large proportion of this is spent on growing the coffee plant (Chapagain and Hoekstra 2003).
So what?
Understanding virtual water provides another angle to look at water and food security and/or scarcity. Water is necessary for survival through direct consumption but in its virtual form, it also plays an important role in food and nearly any economic production be it agricultural or industrial (Allan and Olmsted 2003).
Because agriculture is water-intensive, water scarce countries might find it difficult to achieve water and food security without relying on imports and exports. With trade, and by extension trade in virtual water, countries can then import food without coming up with the water they need not necessarily have to grow the crops on their own. To illustrate: a kilo of cereal takes 500-4000 litres of water to produce (Fraiture et al. 2004). By importing cereal instead of growing it, a water scarce country is solving both its water scarcity and food security problems.
What is the problem?
Virtual water trade teaches us that: on a global scale, insofar water efficient countries produce and export agricultural products to water inefficient countries, water savings are achieved. Trade saves irrigated water when the exporting country relies on rainfed agriculture while the importing country is irrigation dependent. Proponents of virtual water trade would argue that it’s a valid water scarcity mitigation strategy.
The problem is, is that for reasons unrelated to water, water savings do not actually materialise because most trade happens between water abundant countries instead (Fraiture et al. 2014). Countries that import a lot of water do not necessarily do so just because they are water scarce, rather, it is done so as a means of protecting their domestic water supplies, land use and availability (Water Footprint Network 2018).
However, water is not the only factor input necessary for agricultural production. All things considered, trade patterns are hence influenced by scarcity of other resources like land. Because we cannot disentangle the importance of water with its other inputs factors, the concept of virtual water trade is inherently inconsistent with economic theories and economic efficiency concepts (Gawel and Bernsen 2013).
Virtual water trade encourages water scarce countries to import water-intensive food products. However, this also increases overall and water and water-dependent food security (Allan 2001, Aldaya et al. 2010). Jordan, for instance, imports a virtual water volume that is nearly five times higher than its own renewable water resources (Mekonnen and Hoekstra 2011). An advantage is that Jordan saves its own resources but it also makes them vulnerable to fluctuation to price fluctuations and food crises (Antonelli et al. 2014). Water and food goes beyond physical necessities but crosses into issues surrounding national sovereignty and security – something that virtual water fails to take into account.
My thoughts Personally, the virtual water concept is more to be used as an analytical lens than a policy prescription. As an analytical tool, it highlights the interdependence between countries for a common water resource. It provides an interesting alternative to water management by allowing them to consider more strategic ways of getting food and managing their domestic water supplies (i.e. importing virtual water).
However, it feels like virtual water trade as a concept exists in isolation. The concept is not grounded in a larger (and very real) global political economy and global food market. The failure to take into other factor inputs that may actually compel a water scarce country to be comparatively advantageous in exporting food is dismissed in the virtual water trade discussion. Subsidies and taxes distort prices and this has adverse impacts on agriculture in poor countries. These are all missing in an analysis that only considers what virtual water has to tell us.
A more multi-disciplinary approach that takes into account the political, social, environmental dynamic of global political economies is needed to apply virtual water trade analysis to improve policy direction (Yang and Zehnder 2008).