Global virtual water trade, water grabbing, water war and peace

Question 1

New hypothesis neglected costs of water by Dell Angelo

Answer 1

As water is a limited resource, when competition over water is resolved by fetching it from abroad, the social tensions that can consequently emerge or escalate, are shifted elsewhere rather than being resolved. Some of these virtual water flows occur from water scarce countries to more economically powerful nations, as a result of these water appropriations marginalized rural communities lose access to water sources that are crucial to their livelihoods.

Question 2

Hidden socio-environmental costs of virtual water transfers Dell Angelo

Answer 2

In the globalized dynamics of virtual water trade there are countries that benefit from importing water intensive commodities while the exporting countries suffer from different types of socio-environmental costs. This is a specific form of socio-environmental cost shifting.

Question 3

General definition water grabbing

Answer 3

Franco and Kay (2012) - where powerful actors are able to take control of or divert valuable water resources and watersheds for their own benefit, depriving local communities whose livelihood often depend on these resource an ecosystems”

Question 4

Why Water wars should be considered a dispelled myth by Dell’ Angelo

Answer 4

• Cooperation prevails over conflict, history shows that
• Technology will increase water access, tech optimism, better agriculture irrigation, desalinization, etc.
• Strategic power of virtual water, water resources can be appropriated through trade
• Characteristics of water and its accessibility is very different than oil, very different strategic economic resources:
  o Oil: important for industrial production, uneven distributed, strategic commodity, oligopolistic organized, Key for economic develop
  o Water: biological process, plentiful and wide, non-strategic, public monopolies, low revenues.