Prof. Klaus Hubacek was interviewed by BBC news on virtual scarce water in China

Prof. Klaus Hubacek was interviewed by BB News for a new study on virtual scarce water in China published in Environmental Science & Technology.

Highly developed but water-scarce regions in China, such as Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin, are contributing to water depletion in other water-scarce regions of the country through imports of food, textile, and other water intensive products, according to this new study by Drs. Kuishuang Feng, Klaus Hubacek, Laixiang Sun, in collaboration with the ETH Zurich and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). The new study used the concept of “virtual water,” an economic concept used to track water flows through trade, to track how water is traded through agricultural products and other goods that require water to produce. But while previous virtual water studies had treated all water equally, the new study accounts for water scarcity to assess China’s hidden flows. BBC news: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p022kj4w