The Relationship between Virtual Water Exports and the Country’s Water Resources Inventory

The imbalance between water supply and demand in the country has challenged water resource management, especially in the agricultural sector. The virtual water study approach, as an approach that values the use of water inputs in the production and consumption of various commodities, has been established and discussed for almost two decades. Based on this concept, the issue of virtual water trade has become important, and countries are interested in knowing how much water they export or how much they import in the trade of agricultural and industrial goods. In this regard, the international trade in agricultural products and the displacement of water contained in them, known as virtual water exports, can be one of the solutions for water resources management. In this paper, it has been studied the relationship between the country’s virtual water export and water resources inventory of the country for the period of 2006-2013 using the generalized method of moments (GMM) method. Results showed that virtual water exports had a significant positive relationship with the inventory of water resources, GDP, and population.