Abstract
Sustainable agriculture in China is threatened by rapid socioeconomic development, urbanization, and climate change. In addition, the distribution of freshwater resources between regions is highly unequal, and water shortages are common in arid regions. The virtual water trade can help to ease water shortages in arid areas by utilizing the comparative advantage of water resources in other areas. However, sometimes the patterns of the virtual water trade do not fit the distribution of water resources and, in these instances, inter-regional coordination would help to improve the level of equality in the virtual water trade. We combined the concept of the Gini coefficient with a multi-objective optimization model to investigate the inter-regional coordination of the virtual water trade in an arid region of China. Agricultural data from different regions of Gansu Province in 2014 were used to explore methods of improving the equality of virtual water flow patterns in the agricultural sector. Three constraints (a crop supply constraint, an irrigation water constraint, and an economic benefit constraint) were set up to investigate the relationship between different challenges and the effects of inter-regional coordination. Our results validated the use of the proposed method in Gansu Province and indicated that it could be applied to other arid regions. Variations in crop supply, irrigation water, and economic benefits were found among the different constraint scenarios, illustrating the trade-offs between water-saving and agricultural objectives. Our results also showed the balance between various factors, including the equality of the virtual water patterns, water-saving measures, and economic benefits. These results support the effectiveness of inter-regional coordination and indicate that the improvement in equality and the adjustment cost should be balanced. Our findings will help to guide the planning of local crop acreages to achieve the best virtual water balance model between regions.
Highlights
Meeting the growing world population’s demands for food is a challenge, with limited freshwater resources and agricultural land under increasing pressure from climate change, population growth, and socioeconomic development [1]
We validated our proposed method through a case study and found that different constraints lead to variations in the planting area, crop supply, irrigation water usage, and economic benefits
Because exchanges of virtual water between different divisions may help to save water on the regional scale, it is crucial to evaluate the inter-regional coordination of virtual water transfers (VWTs) in arid areas
Summary
Meeting the growing world population’s demands for food is a challenge, with limited freshwater resources and agricultural land under increasing pressure from climate change, population growth, and socioeconomic development [1]. The ratio of the inflow of virtual water to the amount of local water available is lower in water-scarce areas, which means that the water replaced by imports is insufficient to support sustainable development This inequality leads to an excessive consumption of local water resources and difficulties in exploiting the comparative advantage of water-rich areas. Hassan and Thiam [23] recommended improvements in the efficiency of water use and the competitiveness of agriculture in achieving lower net exports of water and food security objectives in arid regions The realization of these recommendations requires inter-regional coordination. When different areas are linked geographically and through economic ties, VWTs will help to achieve efficiencies in water use in different areas, and improve economic contacts between areas [24] This shows that the management of VWTs is an inter-regional problem and requires the coordination of all the relevant areas to adjust.
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