Concepts of Planning for Virtual Water

The amount of water used to produce a product or service is called virtual water. Trade of products and services between countries is called virtual water trade. Virtual water for a given product is an index of environmental degradation that occurred by the product production. Usually, there are misinterpretation in virtual water concepts that makes its applicability for substitution of a product with others questionable. Therefore, the planning concepts for virtual water trade should be taken into consideration. In this survey, first the potential of the concepts of virtual water trade were investigated. In applicability of the concepts of virtual water trade, the regional context and conscious choice should be considered. The effective factors in proper applicability of the virtual water concepts to food trade are food security, food self-sufficiency, food safety, food sovereignty, and environmental conservation. Furthermore, in this regards, the employment and poverty in a country should be considered. Also, in applicability of the virtual water trade, the geo-politics, pricing and subsidies for agricultural products, investments in infrastructure instead of virtual water trade, and changing diets should be considered. For reduction in the virtual water trade, the value of water in agricultural products and food production methods should be changed. Although the methods of calculating the virtual water of agricultural products are not well established, these uncertainties should not be emphasized very much; rather, the policy makers should be familiarized with the concepts of the virtual water trade in order to make conscious choices.