PS 85-246
Mapping Israel's virtual water trade

Friday, August 15, 2014
Exhibit Hall, Sacramento Convention Center
Raphael J. Astrow, Information Systems, Carnegie Mellon University, New York, NY
Randy Weinberg, Information Systems, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Background/Question/Methods

How does Israel’s water deficit affect its relationships with its global and regional neighbors? We developed a mobile application that illustrates Israel’s reliance on virtual water imports for food and other commodities to offset its rising water demands and sustain its growing population. Virtual water trade is the implicit exchange of water when commodities are traded from one place to another. The application, which works on Android and Apple devices, demonstrates Israel's blue, green and grey virtual water imports and exports for 42 commodities from 2009 through 2012 in an accessible format. The app is intended for use by a general audience interested in learning about the concepts of virtual water and, in particular, Israel's virtual water trade balances.

Results/Conclusions

The application’s calculations show that Israel imports significantly more virtual water than it exports for each of the 42 commodities. These commodities come from a wide range of domains, primarily foodstuffs and industrial inputs. For example for soybeans alone in 2012, Israel imported 396,481,553 cubic meters of green virtual water from the United States. In 2011, Israel imported 1,359,302 cubic meters of green virtual water from Spain through wine imports. The application also demonstrates the little known effects of third party intermediaries on Israel’s virtual water trade. For example in 2012, Israel imported 675,452,356 cubic meters of green virtual water from Switzerland singularly by importing 880,299 tons of wheat. However, Switzerland does not itself produce large amounts of wheat for export; third party import / export firms located in Switzerland act as intermediaries in Israel’s global wheat trade. Overall between 2009 and 2012, imports of wheat and soybeans and exports of grapes and potatoes were among the most substantial contributors to Israel’s virtual water footprint.