IIASA Report Exposes Hidden Trade Flows of Water, Energy, Food

Published on August 18, 2017 13:48 by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Academic

The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) has published a report on virtual trade in water, energy and food in East Asia.

East Asia, Pixabay

The report finds that China’s export strategy is affecting its own food security and degrading its environment.

The report, published in the ‘Applied Energy’ scientific journal, observes that global value chains and regional consumer demand have resulted in greater interdependence among East Asian countries, but that current trade flows are unsustainable from the water-energy-food nexus perspective.

Here's the abstract:

This analysis demonstrates the hidden virtual flows of water, energy, and food embodied in intra-regional and transnational inter-regional trade. China’s current national export oriented economic growth strategy in East Asia is not sustainable from the WEFN perspective. China is a net virtual exporter of nexus resources to Japan and South Korea.

China’s prioritization of economic growth and trade in low value added and pollution intensive sectors consumes a great amount of nexus resources within its territory to satisfy consumers’ demands in Japan and South Korea. Japan’s Kanto and Kinki regions and South Korea’s Sudokwon region were the major beneficiaries while China bore the environmental burden associated with the production of exports.

For example, net virtual exports from China’s East region included over 1.2 billion m3 of scarce water and 61.3 million metric (CO2 equivalent) tons of greenhouse gases (i.e. CO2, NH4, and N2O) and 2 million metric tons of SOx emissions.

Trade is an important mechanism for overcoming resource bottlenecks, but, taking into account environmental linkages, regional specialization is not necessarily mutually beneficial. This analysis demonstrates a mismatch between regional water-energy-food availability and final resource consumption and the lack of attention for environmental impacts in national economic growth strategies.

Resource scarce countries like China must, therefore, incorporate trade-off decisions between pursuing national economic growth, incurring environmental degradation, and food security into strategic regional development policies.

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Taxonomy

Resource Management
Water Resource Mapping
Water-Energy Nexus
Consumption
Water Resource Management
Water Footprint