The impacts of global warming and diet change on the virtual water consumption:  Estimating the present and future invisible virtual water resource use in East Africa

Sammanfattning: The production of food is the biggest water consumer and it is required to meet the growing demand of food from a growing population and changing diets. Water can be dislocated indirectly in its hidden virtual form in traded food products as the water that is needed to produce the product locally. East Africa is a generally water scarce region, often ignored in scientific literature and characterized by a currently fast-growing population and overall economy, resulting in ongoing dietary change of people with growing incomes. The aim of this thesis is to estimate the current amount of water demand as virtual water to produce food for the present and future global change scenarios facing higher temperatures and higher food demand with growing populations. By using the CLIMWAT-model and CROPWAT-database, the virtual water content of all national produced agricultural commodities is summarized as its water footprint and put into relation to the national water availability. The results of the ratio between water footprint and availability show that Somalia’s, Kenya’s and Djibouti‘s food production water demand has exceeded the water availability before 2014. Tanzania and Ethiopia are expected to join these countries between 2014 and 2030. The impact of virtual water trade and global warming balance each other out with 2.23 and 2.45% of change of the water footprint and availability ratio. Meat production consumes twice as much water than crop production with only 5% of the total food weight, making livestock the key driver of virtual water development.