Water footprint and virtual water trade of cash crops in India
Student name: Ms Sunakshi Budhiraja
Guide: Dr Sukanya Das
Year of completion: 2018
Host Organisation: School of Environment and Forestry Sciences, University of Washington Seattle, USA
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Dr Badri Narayanan Gopalakrishnan
Abstract: Freshwater sustains life on earth, facilitating the functioning of the society, environment and the economy. With increasing population and undisciplined lifestyle, coupled with finite resources, countries across the globe are increasingly facing water shortage and water scarcity. India can experience water stress by 2020 and water scarcity by 2025 (Hegde, 2012). Although India receives ample rainfall, groundwater resources are being depleted at a very fast rate to fulfill domestic and agricultural needs. India‘s per capita annual water availability has fallen by 15% to 1545 m3/capita, as compared to 1816 m3/capita in 2001 (Chapagain, Mathews, & Zhang, 2017). In that case, use and management of water resources in a judicious manner becomes imperative in order to mitigate the water scarcity situation.
The agricultural sector consumes more than 65-70% of freshwater. Thus, it is important to ensure sustainable use of water in this sector, in order to ensure food and livelihood security (Katyaini, 2016).
Direct water transfers among regions are costly and hence not feasible. Interlinking of river basins has also been proposed to reduce the pressure on water resources. However, the ability of this alternative to meet the current and future water deficit, and its side effects are still not clear (Kampman, 2007).
In such a situation, ‗virtual water flows‘ among states or countries have been proposed as a viable solution to mitigate the water scarcity situation. Virtual water flows refer to indirect trade of water, in the form of trade in water-intensive goods, from water abundant to water scarce regions.
With this background, this mater‘s dissertation aims to assess the virtual water flows from India, for the period 1980-2013, for six cash crops, namely coffee, cotton, jute, sugarcane, tea and tobacco. The study uses the water footprint methodology pioneered by Hoekstra and other researchers at the University of Twente.
Key words: Water scarcity ∙ Water footprint ∙ Virtual water ∙ Cash crops ∙ Trade ∙ India ∙ comparative advantage
