Assessing Virtual Water Trade Balance of Agricultural Products (A Case Study of Mazandaran province)

According to World Bank Report (2021), the agricultural sector consumes 70 percent of global freshwater. Therefore, managing and exploiting water resources optimally as well as future planning in this sector is necessary. Limited access to water endowments, unequal distribution of water resources, climate changes and increasing global water demand have increased the importance of the issue. Aware of this situation, the main purpose of this study is to investigate the virtual water balance of selected agricultural products in Mazandaran Province with the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in 2018. In this paper, by using CROPWAT and OPTIWAT software, first the water requirement of plants has been calculated and then, by processing the data of foreign trade of Mazandaran province with CIS, the trade balance of virtual water for selected agricultural products has been measured. The results of the present study show that the trade balance of virtual water in Mazandaran Province with the CIS in 2018 was 2816.76 million cubic meters, which indicates overall saved national water resources.The policy recommendation of this study is to pay special attention to virtual water and its combination in the upstream documents in order to conserve national water as well as social, economic and environmental sustainability.