Analysis of intra-country virtual water trade strategy to alleviate water scarcity in Iran

Abstract

Abstract. Increasing water scarcity has posed a major constraint to sustain food production in many parts of the world. To study the situation at the regional level, we took Iran as an example and analyzed how an intra-country "virtual water trade strategy" (VWTS) may help improve cereal production as well as alleviate the water scarcity problem. This strategy calls, in part, for the adjustment of the structure of cropping pattern (ASCP) and interregional food trade where crop yield and crop water productivity as well as local economic and social conditions are taken into account. We constructed a systematic framework to assess ASCP at the provincial level under various driving forces and constraints. A mixedinteger, multi-objective, linear optimization model was developed and solved by linear programming. Data from 1990-2004 were used to account for yearly fluctuations of water availability and food production. Five scenarios were designed aimed at maximizing the national cereal production while meeting certain levels of wheat self-sufficiency under various water and land constraints in individual provinces. The results show that under the baseline scenario, which assumes a continuation of the existing water use and food policy at the national level, some ASCP scenarios could produce more wheat with less water. Based on different scenarios in ASCP, we calculated that 31% to 100% of the total wheat shortage in the deficit provinces could be supplied by the wheat surplus provinces. As a result, wheat deficit provinces would receive 3.5 billion m 3 to 5.5 billion m 3 of virtual water by importing wheat from surplus provinces.

Flow regime alteration due to anthropogenic and climatic changes in the Kangsabati River, India

“…In general, in the downstream of Kangsabati dam, the model prediction has larger uncertainties. The poor calibration and validation results in case of managed downstream flow has also been observed in other studies (Faramarzi et al, 2010;Vaghefi et al, 2013) (Fig. 1).…”

Water footprints of cities – indicators for sustainable consumption and production

“…While previous analyses (with the exception of a few national case studies, e.g., Faramarzi et al, 2010;Verma et al, 2009;Ma et al, 2006) addressed virtual water flows only between countries, our novel approach identifies globally at grid cell level (5 arcmin resolution) crop production surpluses relative to local demand and from that potential export grid cells. By combining those with grid cell specific crop-water use and bi-national trade data, we determine detailed flows of primary crop commodities and associated virtual water within and between countries ( Fig.…”

Assessment of Virtual Water Flows in Iran Using a Multi-Regional Input-Output Analysis

“…To date, virtual water trade has not been evaluated thoroughly for Iran, primarily due to lack of data. The exception is the study by Faramarzi et al (2010) [35], who designed five scenarios to assess how virtual water trade may help to improve cereal production in Iran. They concluded that most of the current water transfer projects in Iran, specifically implemented for wheat production, are not efficient.…”