International trade of scarce water

Manfred Lenzen, Daniel Moran, Anik Bhaduri, Keiichiro Kanemoto, Maksud Bekchanov, Arne Geschke and Barney Foran

Ecological Economics, 2013, vol. 94, issue C, 78-85

Abstract: Recent analyses of the evolution and structure of trade in virtual water revealed that the number of trade connections and volume of virtual water trade have more than doubled over the past two decades, and that developed countries increasingly import water embodied in goods from the rest of the world to alleviate pressure on domestic water resources. At the same time, as demand continues to increase and climate change threatens to alter hydrological cycles, water scarcity is a growing problem. Does research into virtual water trade need to consider water scarcity and differentiate flows out of water-scarce regions from flows out of water-abundant regions? Previous studies sum and compare virtual water volumes originating in countries experiencing vastly different degrees of water scarcity. We therefore incorporate water scarcity into an assessment of global virtual water flows. We use input–output analysis to include indirect virtual water flows. We find that the structure of global virtual water networks changes significantly after adjusting for water scarcity.

Keywords: Virtual water; Multi-region input–output analysis; Water scarcity; International trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (81)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800913002176
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ecolec:v:94:y:2013:i:c:p:78-85

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.06.018

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().