Virtual Water Trade In Agricultural Products On The Sustainable Use Of Water Resources Analysis

Currently it has become a common concern all over the world about how to realizesustainable utilization of water resource to support sustainable development of society andeconomy. In China, distribution of water resource in space and time shows a significant imbalance.Meantime, China's water distribution apparently does not match with its economic structure andspatial pattern of population. It challenges the sustainable development, utilization andmanagement of water resource so severely that China's water resource management in both theoryand practice requires innovative thinking and strategic direction.In recent years, the proposal of the concept virtual water and studies as well as application ofvirtual water strategy is a brand-new focus in the field of sustainable utilization of water resource.Based on comprehensive study in water sustainable and virtual water trade in agriculturecommodity, this paper builds water resource stress indicator to picture the current situation ofregional water use in China, counts the trade volume of the virtual water in main agricultureproducts in 2002-2007, and makes a empirical analysis of how the virtual water trade affects thesustainable utilization of regional water resource. The result shows in the follows.1. Pressure as well as its change on water resource sustainable utilization shows a greatdifference between China's provinces. Dividing the provinces into eastern, central and westernpart, we can see that the eastern region suffers the greatest stress when its change in pressuresuffered shows a significant polarization and central provinces as a whole at a medium levelsteadily while the pressure on water resource in western China is the lowest but has an overallupward trend.2. Since 2002 China has been a net importer in the virtual water trade and the total importgrows gradually. On the other hand, in recent years the rising tendency has slowed down andstabilized. To be specific, the eastern region shows a net import and the western region is a netexporter, while the central provinces has great differences in virtual water import and export ofagricultural products.3. The influence of virtual water trade over the pressure on sustainable utilization of regionalwater resource is different, too. The eastern provinces as a whole reduce their pressure to a greatextent through a net import of virtual water. As a net exporter of virtual water, western regionbears an increasing pressure, which will be an important trend in these areas. Central provincesshow considerable variability of the influence.The virtual water strategy has a good application in China in recent years. As pressure onwater use gradually transfers from medium low level to medium high level, China has to expandthe application of the virtual water strategy and value importing virtual water through agriculturetrade as an efficient way to realize sustainable utilization of water resource. Each province shouldcombine their specific status of social and economic development, water resource utilization, etc.to make integrated decision when introducing and promoting application of virtual water strategy.