scholarly journals The Global Economics of Water: Is Water a Source of Comparative Advantage?

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 32-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Debaere
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Comparative Advantage ◽  
Physical Capital ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Production Factors ◽  
Traditional Production ◽  
Global Economics

With newly available data, I investigate to what extent countries' international trade exploits the very uneven water resources on a global scale. I find that water is a source of comparative advantage and that relatively water abundant countries export more water-intensive products. Additionally, water contributes significantly less to the pattern of exports than the traditional production factors labor and physical capital. This suggests relatively moderate disruptions to overall trade on a global scale due to changing precipitation in the wake of climate change. (JEL F14, O13, O19, Q15, Q25, Q54)

scholarly journals Soil salinization under different climate change scenarios: A global scale analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nima Shokri ◽  
Amirhossein Hassani ◽  
Adisa Azapagic
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Soil Salinity ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Soil Salinization ◽  
Water Evaporation ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Salt Affected Soils

<p>Population growth and climate change is projected to increase the pressure on land and water resources, especially in arid and semi-arid regions. This pressure is expected to affect all driving mechanisms of soil salinization comprising alteration in soil hydrological balance, sea salt intrusion, wet/dry deposition of wind-born saline aerosols — leading to an increase in soil salinity. Soil salinity influences soil stability, bio-diversity, ecosystem functioning and soil water evaporation (1). It can be a long-term threat to agricultural activities and food security. To devise sustainable action plan investments and policy interventions, it is crucial to know when and where salt-affected soils occur. However, current estimates on spatio-temporal variability of salt-affected soils are majorly localized and future projections in response to climate change are rare. Using Machine Learning (ML) algorithms, we related the available measured soil salinity values (represented by electrical conductivity of the saturated paste soil extract, EC<sub>e</sub>) to some environmental information (or predictors including outputs of Global Circulation Models, soil, crop, topographic, climatic, vegetative, and landscape properties of the sampling locations) to develop a set of data-driven predictive tools to enable the spatio-temporal predictions of soil salinity. The outputs of these tools helped us to estimate the extent and severity of the soil salinity under current and future climatic patterns at different geographical levels and identify the salinization hotspots by the end of the 21<sup>st</sup> century in response to climate change. Our analysis suggests that a soil area of 11.73 Mkm<sup>2</sup> located in non-frigid zones has been salt-affected in at least three-fourths of the 1980 - 2018 period (2). At the country level, Brazil, Peru, Sudan, Colombia, and Namibia were estimated to have the highest rates of annual increase in the total area of soils with an EC<sub>e</sub> ≥ 4 dS m<sup>-1</sup>. Additionally, the results indicate that by the end of the 21<sup>st</sup> century, drylands of South America, southern and Western Australia, Mexico, southwest United States, and South Africa will be the salinization hotspots (compared to the 1961 - 1990 period). The results of this study could inform decision-making and contribute to attaining the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals for land and water resources management.</p><p>1. Shokri-Kuehni, S.M.S., Raaijmakers, B., Kurz, T., Or, D., Helmig, R., Shokri, N. (2020). Water Table Depth and Soil Salinization: From Pore-Scale Processes to Field-Scale Responses. Water Resour. Res., 56, e2019WR026707. https://doi.org/ 10.1029/2019WR026707</p><p>2. Hassani, A., Azapagic, A., Shokri, N. (2020). Predicting Long-term Dynamics of Soil Salinity and Sodicity on a Global Scale, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., 117, 52, 33017–33027. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2013771117</p>

Using International Trade Data to Inform the Plant Health and Biosecurity Response in the UK

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 117-120
Author(s):  
Nicola Spence ◽  
Sam Grant
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
International Trade ◽  
Health Risk ◽  
Native Species ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Plant Health ◽  
Pests And Diseases ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
The Uk

Plants are essential for supporting human life, providing food, oxygen and medicine as well as benefits to health from interacting with nature. Plants also play a crucial role in ecosystems and in mitigating the effects of climate change. The importance of plants to humans and to the environment is gaining a higher level of attention in today's political and social landscape. The Great Britain Plant Health and Biosecurity Strategy will be updated this year to reflect upcoming challenges for maintaining high biosecurity standards while the Tree Health Resilience Strategy protects our trees going forward, allowing for adaption to environmental change and building resilience to future threats. Additionally, 2020 is the FAO's International Year of Plant Health providing a unique opportunity to raise the profile of plant heath further on a global scale. Critical to biosecurity is the global trade in plants and plant commodities which may offer us the option to grow plants that are more suited to a future, warmer climate and thus more resilient to climate change, but which brings with it an increased risk of invasive pests and diseases. It is important that we protect our native species and minimise the risks of introducing new pests and diseases. The UK's plant health regime aims to manage that risk to protect the value of plants and trees, both as crops and forestry products, as well as ecosystem services and societal benefits. The UK is a net importer of plants and plant commodities and it is the role of the Plant Health and Seeds Inspectorate (PHSI) and the Forestry Commission (FC) to carry out checks on imported material. Given that there are over 1,000 pests on the UK Plant Health Risk Register the challenge cannot be understated. It is unrealistic to expect that we can provide effective protection from all pests and diseases so potentially serious pests which are identified by the UK Plant Health Risk Group are subject to a detailed pest risk analysis (PRA) following internationally agreed methodologies. Import inspections are risk-based and use the outcomes of the PRA as the basis for focusing resource to the highest threats. The experimental statistics released by Defra in March 2020 'Plant Health – international trade and controlled consignments, 2014–2018' were developed to address some of the evidence gaps around plant health related trade and the value of plant health, and to provide users with information on the work of import inspectors.

scholarly journals Quantifying the impact of climate change on water resources at the basin scale on five continents – a unified approach

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 7485-7519 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. C. Todd ◽  
R. G. Taylor ◽  
T. Osborne ◽  
D. Kingston ◽  
N. W. Arnell ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
River Flow ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Climate Impacts ◽  
Catchment Scale ◽  
Considerable Uncertainty ◽  
Basin Scale ◽  
The Impact

Abstract. This paper presents an overview of the methods and results of an assessment of climate change impacts on catchment scale water resources, conducted under the QUEST-GSI (Global Scale Impacts) programme. The project method involved running simulations of catchment-scale hydrology using a unified set of past and future climate scenarios, to enable a consistent analysis of the climate impacts around the globe. The results from individual basins are presented in other papers in 2010. Overall, the studies indicate that in most basins the models project substantial changes to river flow, beyond that observed in the historical record, but that in many cases there is considerable uncertainty in the magnitude and sign of the projected changes. The implications of this for adaptation activities are discussed.

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