Water Footprint and Climate Change Adaptation Strategies on Agriculture Development under One Belt One Road Initiative: An Overview

Abstract

One Belt One Road (OBOR) is an initiative of collaboration and development that was put forward by China. Moreover, the agricultural production in most of the country members confronted Water scarcity and climate change. In current study it has been used Water Footprint (WF) as tool for measuring water consumption in China and participating country. Thus, this paper aims to understand OBOR from the perspective of WF of agricultural products. On the whole, the results showed that agriculture’s WF in China and OBOR countries increased steadily from about 6.84 trillion m3 in the initial period to about 9.54 trillion m3 in 2018. They also showed that China and India were the largest countries consumed WF which accounted for 76.12% of the total WF used in agricultural production. Furthermore, the WF that has been consumed for agriculture production in China and spanning countries was excessively concentrated on some products. As a whole, green the main water type used in producing agricultural products. Since announcing OBOR initiative in 2013 until now, there is not any remarkable change on GHG emissions that generated from agriculture due to the climate change impacts can be observed only on the long term. WF is a new perspective to explore OBOR. Agricultural trade with China certainly benefits both the countries along OBOR and China from the perspective of WF. The findings of this study is essential as references for better agriculture production structure, and is useful for managing water in China and the nations along the Silk Road, mitigating water scarcities, and wisely distributing the water resources in the various sectors.