The UN warns in a new report that international food trade intensifies water scarcity issues for the world’s most vulnerable, urging global policy changes to address these growing inequities.
A new report from the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) reveals that the global agricultural trade significantly impacts water distribution, often disadvantaging the world’s most vulnerable populations.
International food trade, while essential to balancing global food supply and demand, inadvertently transfers vast amounts of “virtual water” — the freshwater used to produce crops — across borders. This dynamic has reshaped the world’s water distribution, with profound implications for water scarcity.
The study highlights that high-income countries, which can afford to import food, benefit the most from this system as they save significant amounts of domestic water resources.
Conversely, low-income countries that rely on food exports deplete their valuable water supplies, exacerbating local scarcity and jeopardizing the livelihoods of their populations.
“This form of ‘virtual water trade’ reflects a broader pattern of environmental injustice around the world, where the environmental costs and risks are increasingly shifted from those who can afford to absorb them to those who cannot,” co-author Kaveh Madani, the director of UNU-INWEH, said in a news release. “Our report is a wake-up call about another inequity problem; the rich nations are mainly accountable for. The existing global food trade system continues to make the world’s most vulnerable people and nations more vulnerable.”
The report reveals that while regions such as Northern China, Europe and parts of Northern Africa benefit most from agricultural trade, countries including India, Pakistan, eastern Australia and the central United States either gain little benefit or experience worsened water stress.
According to UNU-INWEH, 75% of the population in high-income countries and 62% in low-income nations experience reduced water scarcity due to food trade. However, the flip side shows that 22% in high-income and 37% in low-income countries face increased water scarcity.
These figures underscore the uneven impact, with poorer communities bearing the brunt of negative outcomes.
The researchers emphasize that the global food trade system rarely yields purely positive or negative results. Instead, it creates trade-offs that result in significant regional and socioeconomic disparities.
“This reality calls for more targeted and equity-oriented water and trade policies that support vulnerable populations with limited adaptive capacity and promote fair and sustainable global water governance,” added lead author Yue Qin.
Policymakers are urged to focus on how trade outcomes affect low-income populations, not just overall water availability.
National strategies could include subsidies for vulnerable households, capping water prices and investing in local water infrastructure.
Agricultural improvements, such as drip irrigation and shifting to less water-intensive crops, can also make production more water-efficient.
Moreover, diversifying crop imports and trading partners can alleviate pressure on water-stressed nations. The report highlights China’s strategy of adjusting its rice and wheat import mix to balance its water demands more fairly, illustrating the importance of coordinated actions in global trade policies.
The study concludes with a call for governments to design policies considering water scarcity and an equitable distribution of benefits and costs to ensure global trade contributes to sustainable development without widening existing inequalities.
Source: United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health