John Allan

Virtual Water - the Water, Food, and Trade Nexus. Useful Concept or Misleading Metaphor?

The purpose of this contribution is first, to respond to the request for clarification of the term virtual water by Stephen Merrett. Second, it provides a narrative for those who might not be aware of the origin and development of the concept. Third, the discussion will draw attention to the problems encountered in gaining entry for the idea into those water policy discourses where the it was most relevant. The concept has been in currency for almost a decade. The use of the term increased rapidly after 199 5 and by the millennium tire idea had become central to many dialogues relating to water security preliminary to the Kyoto World Water Forum in March 2003. Merrett s (2003) challenge that the water community should give attention to the language used by its diverse professionals and scientists is timely. Inter-disciplinarity is always difficult. In the water sector such difficulties have been magnified not just by the perversity of its tribal dynamics but especially because the political stakes are high. This account and response will not meet the standards of philosophical analysis set by Merrett. It is written in the spirit of having a further impact on an important on-going discourse. And in the hope that the ideas reach water po/icymakers. Others might want to comment on whether they think virtual water is a scientifically respectable term or perhaps that it is just a potentially misleading, though

Virtual water hegemony: the role of agribusiness in global water governance

The recent global food crises have highlighted how the agro-food system tends to be subject to powerful agribusiness players, with thus far unidentified consequences for global water security. By connecting hydro-hegemony and virtual water concepts, this study illustrates the Western dominance over the virtual water embedded in international agro-food commodity trade flows. Accordingly, foreign direct investment in land by emerging Asian and Arab economies and their increased competition over the sources of global food supply chains appear as strategies to challenge the Western agribusiness “virtual water hegemony”.

Integrated water resources management is more a political than a technical challenge.

Abstract The Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) approach was developed by environmental scientists, water resource engineers and economists in the late 1980s and the 1990s. Integrated Water Resource Management was a response by water resource planners to the negative outcomes of past water resource policies. Past practice did not for example properly recognise that sectoral demands could be competitive. The conflict between irrigated agriculture and the environmental services provided by water is a classic case. Upstream and downstream uses can also be incompatible. Integrated Water Resource Management was supposed to address these potential contests by planning. The study will show first, that Integrated Water Resource Management is a discursive political process and not just a planning process. Secondly it will show how social and political theory can be used to explain how and why attitudes to water resource allocation and management have changed through the last half of the twentieth century. Thirdly, such theory will also be used to show why the assumptions of Northern water policy makers and politicians differ from those in the South on how to achieve ‘sustainability’. The analysis will focus on the last three decades of the twentieth century when green social movements had a decisive impact on the way environmental services were perceived. Finally, the study will argue that the pace of adoption of water policy reform has been very much slowed in the Middle East in particular through the import of ‘virtual water’ to ameliorate the regions serious water deficit. Virtual water is the water embedded in water intensive commodities such as wheat. Political leaders have been able to solve their serious watershed constraints by resorting to the irresistible virtual water solution in problem sheds outside the region.

Rural economic transitions: groundwater use in the Middle East and its environmental consequences

Renewable groundwater is a fatally attractive source of water, especially in political economies that have not yet devoted substantial political energy to developing norms and laws to establish ownership, or to regulating water use to achieve efficiency and environmental consideration. Farm lobbies are the oldest of all lobbies. They are incredibly strong in a young economy such as that of the USA. They are even stronger in societies that have been coping with periodic ‘lean years’ for four or more millennia.

Water Security in the Mediterranean and the Middle East

The Mediterranean, and especially North Africa and the Middle East, entered a phase of irreversible water deficit in the early 1970’s. Some economies — as those in the Gulf-had run out in the 1950’s. By the early 1970’s major economies such as Egypt entered its water deficit, as did the region as a whole (40.2).

Beyond the Watershed: Avoiding the Dangers of Hydro-Centricity and Informing Water Policy

The purpose of this chapter will be to demonstrate that there are a number of economic processes that have the capacity to ameliorate local water scarcity. Arid and semi-arid regions and economies worldwide encountered water scarcity in the past thirty years. Many more will encounter water scarcity in the next three decades. The analysis will review briefly three ameliorating processes - first, the global role of virtual water in water scarce regions, secondly, the impact of socio-economic development on water management options and thirdly, the cultural specificity of water demand management policies. All three processes have the characteristics of being economically invisible and politically silent in the easily politicized management of water. Their impacts, however, are determining with respect to solving local water deficits.