Virtual water: tackling the threat to our planet's most precious resource, by Tony Allen

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Virtual water: tackling the threat to
our planet's most precious resource,
by Tony Allen
J. Jackson Ewing a
a Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore
Available online: 24 Nov 2011
To cite this article: J. Jackson Ewing (2011): Virtual water: tackling the threat to our planet's
most precious resource, by Tony Allen, Water International, 36:7, 948-950
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Water International
Vol. 36, No. 7, November 2011, 948–950
Book review
Virtual water: tackling the threat to our planet’s most precious resource,byTony
Allen, London, I.B. Taurus, 2011, 384 pp, £12.99 (paper), ISBN 9781845119843
In Virtual water, Tony Allen offers a timely, compelling and highly accessible book that
adeptly positions freshwater within key global systems. From his confrontational opening
salvo on the 1,100-litre English breakfast, Allen challenges readers to consider society’s
relationship with water along with their own complicity in the world’s pervasive water
challenges. The foundational theses of Virtual water are at times complex and certainly
multifaceted, but may be summarized as the notion that water is embedded in a range of
products that we consume, that its presence often remains hidden, and that the trade of
water-intensive goods is tantamount to the trade of water resources. Food is far and away
the most significant such water-intensive commodity (a point on which Allen repeatedly
reminds the reader), and agriculture is therefore ubiquitous to all of the major arguments
in Virtual water.
The first component of Allen’s argument reveals the capacity for virtual water to con-
ceal the presence of water in food products, and as a result, mask the true footprint of
water from economists, politicians and consumers alike. This is possible not least of all
because of the importance of “green water”, or water that is present within soils, for agri-
culture. Unlike the “blue water” of the global surface or the water table, green water defies
large-scale manipulation through engineered projects, is present in soils due to the pres-
ence of localized rainfall and, as Allen consistently intimates, is the key resource needed
for a majority of the world’s food production.
This water becomes increasingly “virtual” as a result of the trade of food commodi-
ties that it underwrites. This trade, as Allen writes, has “obscured the relationship between
society and its water resources” (p. 33), and has widened the cognitive chasm separating
food consumers from the vital water systems upon which they depend. As an unapolo-
getic Malthusian, Allen argues that this chasm is dangerous and that contemporary trends
in demography and consumption patterns threaten to outstrip global water supplies and
plunge vulnerable societies further into the realm of dire water scarcity.
Just as the reader begins to grasp the dangers of virtual water myopia, however, Allen
shifts away from his pejorative tone to point out that the virtual water trade (that is, the
trade of food from the water-abundant to the water-scarce) has been and will continue to be
essential for managing water challenges. Virtual water processes can save vital resources
and help both water scarce and water abundant actors through creating symbiotic possi-
bilities. Allen goes further during his subsequent Brazilian case study to declare that the
food commodity trade “ensures global water security ... prevents water wars, starvation
and death ... promotes healthy economies, international cooperation and has the potential
to maximize the efficiency of our planet’s water resources” (p. 233). Virtual water thus
has, Allen contends, a “light side” that secures and helps save water and a “dark side” that
obscures, deludes and slows water reform (p. 80). Upon illuminating the dualistic nature
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Water International 949
of virtual water, Allen is free to explore the book’s eight differentiated case studies. These
cases are the highlights of Virtual water and, far from being of interest only to those with a
stake in the countries under exploration, these sections see Allen extrapolate his arguments
more fully than at any other juncture.
Apolitical?
Virtual water is not without its difficulties. Some discerning readers will be troubled by
the lack of referencing, the essential outsourcing of any virtual water methodological dis-
cussion to datasets by Arjen Hoekstra and Ashok Chapagain, and the conversational, often
biographical and sometimes repetitive tone of the book (Hoekstra and Chapagain 2008;
see also Chapagain and Hoekstra [2008]). There is no dispute that virtual water calcula-
tions can quickly become very complex (Liu et al. 2009), and readers on the lookout for
alarmism may ask wantingly how Allen has come to tell them that their glass of milk has
240 litres of embedded water in it, and if this figure is contingent upon the type of milk in
question, the location of the cow, whether this water will be counted again if the milk cow
becomes beef, and so forth. However, digressions into rigorous methodological discussions
would not fit the accessible nature of this work, and Allen was clearly deliberate rather than
indolent in his decision to exclude them.
Somewhat more egregious was Allen’s difficulty in reconciling his thoughts on poli-
tics and politicians. Politicians are portrayed at various points, largely homogenously, as
working from constructed realities, consistently seeking short-term gains at the cost of
long-term strategy and unwilling to face down the hidden challenges put forth by virtual
water. Allen attempts to soften these critiques by marvelling at the difficulties faced by
politicians and emphasizing the importance of respecting the constrictions within which
politicians work. Some will find this softening disingenuous and the reality is that Allen
is hard on the policy makers of the water world. Despite his efforts to hedge, justify
and dichotomize arguments on the science–politics connection, Allen’s frustration with
politicians and political processes repeatedly comes to the surface.
Others will no doubt take issue with some details of Virtual water, such as Allen’s lion-
ization of China’s one-child policy and its water strategies more generally, his rosy picture
of social progress in Vietnam, the conspicuous absence of fish from dietary discussions, or
his vitriolic condemnation of agricultural subsidies in developed countries. None of these
issues however, whether viewed as problematic or not, should negate the overarching value
of Virtual water as none of them undermine the central premise of the book: that water
requires more mature valuation to preserve vital resources and protect the interest of the
water insecure. Allen returns forcefully to these points as he draws the work to a close.
Towards a new valuation paradigm
Allen concludes Virtual water by summatively calling for greater cognisance of the water
requirements of consumer products, the realization that these requirements have impli-
cations for global and local water systems, and the acceptance that water usage should
be factored more overtly and appropriately into the products which it begets. Moreover,
such shifts require participation along the continuum of water stakeholders, from scientists,
engineers and farmers finding ways to use water more efficiently, to government officials
creating responsible water policies, to consumers altering diets to be less water intensive.
Allen is supporting new approaches throughout this continuum for valuing commodities
in ways that better respect the environmental “externalities” that are necessary for their
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950 Book review
production”. Virtual water thus fits more neatly into on-going discourses on paying for eco-
logical services, whether they come from forests, biodiversity, rivers or other environmental
systems, than it does within the wider literature on the contemporary geopolitics of water.
In fact, Allen makes the case early and often that the current water conundrum results pri-
marily from water foolishly being exploited as a non-excludable and non-rivalrous public
good, when in fact it is anything but.
It is in this sphere of environmental valuation that Virtual water makes its most impor-
tant contributions. There are growing signs that traditional and arguably simplistic modes
of commodity valuation are changing, and that responding to the environmental challenges
of the twenty-first century will require paradigmatic shifts in where environmental systems
reside within the global economy. Perhaps nowhere is this reality more apparent than in
the freshwater sector, and those seeking strategies for a more appropriate representation
of water’s economic relevance could certainly benefit from reading this latest contribution
from Tony Allen.
References
Allen, T., 2011 Water: tackling the threat to our planet’s most precious resource.NewYork:
I. B. Tauris.
Chapagain, A.K. and Hoekstra A.Y., 2008. The global component of freshwater demand and supply:
an assessment of virtual water flows between nations as a result of trade in agricultural and
industrial products. Water International, 33 (1), 19–32.
Hoekstra, A.Y. and Chapagain, A.K., 2008. Globalization of water: sharing the planet’s freshwater
resources. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Liu, Junguo, Zehnder, A.J.B. and Yang, H., 2009. Global consumptive water use for crop production:
the importance of green water and virtual water. Water Resources Research, 45, 1–15.
J. Jackson Ewing
Centre for Non-Traditional Security (NTS) Studies
S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Email: isjjewing@ntu.edu.sg
© 2011, J. Jackson Ewing
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