The Evaluation Of The Impacts Of The Virtual Water Strategic In Northwest China

Liberalization has caused an increase not only in international trade of goods and services but also national trade. As the environmental and social consequences of trade are complex, they are rarely included in the national policies. In this paper we develop a method for evaluating the impacts of the virtual water strategic in northwest China.The first methodological step of our research illustrates the spatial relationship of Northwest China with regions all over the country through the import and export of virtual water. The second step links this spatial dimension with a qualitative assessment of the environmental and socio-economic impacts of the implementation of the virtual water strategy in Northwest China. The developed method is used to estimate the overall environmental and socio-economic impacts of an increase in virtual water imports to Northwest. Still, further research is required for fine-tuning of the utility functions, including a weighting procedure in the aggregation procedure.The result shows that the net volume of virtual water from Northwest to other regions is 192. 0877×10~8m~3. Specifically, there is a large volume of virtual water exports from Northwest to Eastern Coastal region and Central region and virtual water imports from Northern Coast, Northeast, Southwest, Southern Coastal and Jingjin regions. The smallest of the sort of the environmental effectiveness of unit use of virtual water is Southern Coastal, Southwest, Eastern Coastal, Central, Northeast, Jingjin, Northern Coast, Northweat regions. The smallest of the sort of the Socio-economic effectiveness of unit use of virtual water is Jingjin, Eastern Coastal, Northern Coast, Southern Coastal, Northeast, Central, Northeast, Southwest regions. If the virtual water imports increased by 25%, environmental and socio-economical effectiveness will be improved significantly.