So is there virtuallly no right answer?

So, after a rather sombre rant about the ‘successful’ sharing of the transboundary Senqu, let us ask…  what are the alternatives? How else can we meet, and even reduce water use in water scarce countries like South Africa?

Many would argue the answer lies in Virtual Water Trading (VWT), where high water intensity products are imported from water abundant countries, and in turn water stressed regions produce less water intensive commodities (fig.1). 

Figure 1: Water footprint of various food products. 

To be clear, ‘virtual water’ is ‘the amount of water consumed in the production process of a product’ (Allan, 1993) and is similar to the more widely used ‘water footprint’ (Hoekstra, 2002). Allen (1996) exemplifies how VWT can be valuable for water-strapped countries, calculating that the Middle East import virtual water (through grain) equivalent to the flow of the Nile!! The South African Development Community (SADC) has advocated such a tactic in order to aid water scarce member nations.

The Orange Basin riparians, or ‘the central belt of scarcity’ (Turton, 1998) (minus Lesotho, for which there is no data and which has a relatively wet climate) are all big virtual water importers, Botswana exports 16% of its water but imports 61% (Lange and Hassan, 2006). Namibia imports a similar 63% but exports 23% due to its production and trade to the EU of beef. South Africa, who pledged $8 billion to the LHWP are the 27^th biggest global importer of virtual water (Hoekstra and Hung, 2002), yet they import only 12% of their water whilst exporting double that. So why not logically change production to meet food, water and trade needs rather than spend billions on diverting this ‘blue gold’? The next post will look specifically at barriers and possibilities in implementing this concept, and explore the pro’s and con’s of its actuality. In a way it seems too good to be true, so lets find out…