China's Regional Water Scarcity and Implications for Grain Supply and Trade

Hong Yang and Alexander Zehnder

Environment and Planning A, 2001, vol. 33, issue 1, 79-95

Abstract: In this paper we highlight the water scarcity and resource depletion in the North China Plain, the ‘breadbasket’ of China. A projection of water demand in the region indicates a continuous aggravation in water deficit in the coming years. Analyses of countermeasures on the supply and demand side suggest that the conventional wisdom of ‘opening up new sources and economising on the use of resources’ may not be an optimal way to deal with water scarcity in the region. Importing water in the form of grain should be taken as an additional measure. This ‘virtual water import’ option needs to be incorporated into the current regional and national agricultural development strategy in which crop structural adjustment is at the core.

Date: 2001
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a3352 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:33:y:2001:i:1:p:79-95

DOI: 10.1068/a3352

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().