Virtual water hegemony: the role of agribusiness in global water governance

Abstract

The recent global food crises have highlighted how the agro-food system tends to be subject to powerful agribusiness players, with thus far unidentified consequences for global water security. By connecting hydro-hegemony and virtual water concepts, this study illustrates the Western dominance over the virtual water embedded in international agro-food commodity trade flows. Accordingly, foreign direct investment in land by emerging Asian and Arab economies and their increased competition over the sources of global food supply chains appear as strategies to challenge the Western agribusiness “virtual water hegemony”.

Keywords:

• global water governance
• water security
• virtual water
• hydro-hegemony
• corporate power
• foreign direct investment in land

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the reviewers for their helpful comments, Professor Arjen Hoekstra and Dr Mesfin Mekonnen for providing the data for tables and the figure, and Dr Matti Kummu for assisting in drawing the figure.