Abstract
Abstract. A debate has long existed on the relationships between human population, natural resources, and development. Recent research has expanded this debate to include the impacts of trade; specifically, virtual water trade, or the water footprint of traded commodities. We conduct an empirical analysis of the relationships between virtual water trade, population, and development in Africa. We find that increases in virtual water imports do not lead to increases in population growth nor do they diminish human welfare. We establish a new index of virtual water trade openness and show that levels of undernourishment tend to fall with increased values of virtual water trade openness. Countries with small dam storage capacity obtain a higher fraction of their agricultural water requirements from external sources, which may indicate implicit "infrastructure sharing" across nations. Globally, increased crop exports tend to correlate with increased crop water use efficiency, though this relationship does not hold for Africa. However, internal African trade is much more efficient in terms of embodied water resources than any other region in the world. Thus, internal African trade patterns may be compensating for poor internal production systems.
Highlights
The debate on the relationship between human population growth, development, and natural resources dates back to Condorcet (1794) and Malthus (1798), and has been contributed to by other classic works (Jevons, 1865; Ehrlich, 1968; Simon, 1980)
We examine the empirical evidence on the relationship between virtual water trade, population growth, and human development, with a particular focus on Africa
We define a new index of virtual water trade openness (VWTO) to mirror the classical definition of trade openness based on financial value
Summary
The debate on the relationship between human population growth, development, and natural resources dates back to Condorcet (1794) and Malthus (1798), and has been contributed to by other classic works (Jevons, 1865; Ehrlich, 1968; Simon, 1980). Our major findings are that increased virtual water imports do not lead to population growth, but do increase human welfare; increased virtual water trade is correlated with enhanced food security; countries with less dam storage capacity tend to consume a larger fraction of their agricultural water footprint from external sources; and that internal production systems in Africa do not show water use efficiency gains with increased exports, but that internal African trade is the most efficient region in the world. These results suggest that trade may be helping African nations to meet food and water security objectives
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