Virtual water

Abstract

In many regions of the world, water scarcity has created numerous problems for the supply of domestic water use, agricultural production, and for the human life cycle in general. Perhaps in the near future water will be synonymous with gold. Over the past two decades, the virtual water concept has become known as a mitigating water scarcity crisis solution which can balance the unequal distribution of world water resources. Virtual water is the amount of water that a product consumes in a production process from start to end. Developers of the virtual water idea believe that by exporting and importing commodities, large volumes of water can be traded which is referred to as virtual water trading. In the theory of virtual water trade, in order to reduce the pressure on water resources, it is recommended that water-scarce countries import products instead of producing them from internal water sources and allocate these water resources for other lucrative business activities. Therefore, in this chapter, the virtual water concept and its specifications and evaluations are fully explained.