Global Systems Ameliorate Local Droughts
Water, Food and TradeThe paper shows that solutions can be found in 'problemsheds' when they cannot be found in 'watersheds'. This concept is relevant with respect to short-term drought as well as to long-term water stress. The volumes of water transferred across the world via trade, embedded in water intensive commodities such as grain, are massive in terms of the occasional and accumulating water deficits experienced in water stressed regions.
Such strategic water is relatively easily mobilised; very easily mobilised compared with the problems that engineers would face in shifting such high water volumes.
2014
MENA
English
The reason such secure and globally available ‘virtual water’ is significant is that politicians can defer dealing with the impacts of a high proportion of the drought events because these reserves of accessible ‘water’ exist.
The study will discuss water resource deficits in Mediterranean countries in the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa region) as these economies have encountered the extreme water shortage and drought events in the first region to run out of water. Only Spain of European countries has experienced water stress on the scale experienced by the MENA economies. The MENA economies, apart from Turkey and Lebanon, moved into water deficit in the two decades before 1970. The experience of these political economies has highlighted the remedies mobilised by the political leaderships of water stressed economies. It will also be explained why environmentally and economically sound water policy reforms are difficult to implement.
Related Publications
