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And this solution is "Virtual Water Trading" !?!
Let me rephrase that...Think of water as money, the more water you invest in a crop, the higher its value; so for example 1 kilogram wheat bread equals to 1600 liter water and 1 kilogram rice equals to 2500 liter water and so on. Therefore, the countries should calculate all its water resources and its water demand - in terms of food, industry and domestic use - and balance its water trade, so countries with scarce water resource should import water and that is true in case of some North African countries (very limited though). However all around the world water-rich countries are also importing virtual water !?!
My question now is, if we are all discussing the global financial crisis so attentively, why not discussing the virtual water trade as well .....which is more precious money or water?
Unfortunately, not only that some water-rich countries import more water but they also import it from water-scarce countries!?!
Definitely, the obvious solution will be increasing the people's awareness of the importance of virtual water and that being a water-scarce country means that they should import rather than export more water, that is true, however, water-rich countries are not playing fair because they have obligation not to threaten the global water balance...especially if they are making conferences and meetings advising the rest of the world to do that !?!
So I guess importing virtual water from Africa is logically unacceptable but some water-rich countries REALLY do that....Not fair isn't it?
May be nowadays virtual water trading is not capturing headlines, but I am pretty sure that it will in the next few years, because clearly everybody will eventually discover that water is more precious than anything. However, this trade will be very difficult and life-threatening if water-rich countries continued its pursue to import more and more water because that will drive the virtual water market to higher prices which will lead to the death of water-scarce poor countries one after another!
Being aware of the water footprint of everything, will give us an overall view of the water-cost of each product. Also UNESCO (2002-2004) made a virtual-water research project that showed the importance of virtual water and calculated the ongoing virtual water trading of each country....so to say the "unconscious" virtual water trading!?!
I called it unconscious because I am sure that most of the countries are not really calculating and balancing this trade at all, it is just a still image of the virtual water situation at the time of the study.
I hope that soon people will be aware of this important trade and benefiting from it and I also hope that all countries join hand to balance the water requirement all around the world.
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Useful Links on this subject:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/health/rowing-machines-and-workouts-on-virtual-water.html
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120216/jsp/frontpage/story_15141306.jsp
http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/home
http://geography.about.com/library/misc/ucwheat.htm
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Image Credit: by Tomas Castelazo via Wikimedia Commons.