• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
• /
• 2023.05a
• /
• pp.394-394
• /
• 2023

The world's sustainable growth is being severely hampered by the inefficient use of water resources. Despite the widely acknowledged importance of trade in global and regional water and food security, societal reliance on local production as well as international trade remains inadequately assessed. Therefore, using South Korea as a case study, this study fills in this research gap by applying the virtual water concept, the logarithmic mean divisia index (LMDI) method, and the Tapio decoupling model. The virtual water concept was used to estimate South Korea's net virtual water trade for major grain crops from 1992 to 2017. Then, the LMDI method was utilized to assess the driving factors causing changes in net virtual water trade. Lastly, the Tapio decoupling model was used to investigate the decoupling relationships between economic growth and the driving factors of net virtual water trade. Results showed that South Korea remains a net importer of virtual water flows with respect to grain crops, with an average import of 16,559.24 million m³ over the study period. In addition, the change in net virtual water trade could be attributed to water intensity effect, product structure effect, economic effect, and population effect. However, water intensity and economic effects were the major decisive factors for decrease and increase in net virtual water trade respectively, while the population and product structure effects had minor positive influences on the net virtual water trade. Furthermore, water intensity and economic growth showed a strong decoupling in most periods, while the decoupling state between product structure and economic growth was observed as expansive negative decoupling. Likewise, population size and economic growth showed a weak decoupling in most periods. The results reveal South Korea's status as it concerns the virtual water trade of grain crops, thus providing valuable insights into the sustainability of trade activities for the management of local water resources.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
• /
• 2020.06a
• /
• pp.211-211
• /
• 2020

The concept of virtual water has been largely applied in the study of regional, national, and global water flows with particular emphasis on water scarcity. Despite water traditionally being managed locally, certain global forces influence the local water resource scarcity/availability and hence virtual water exchanges worldwide. It is therefore of necessity that the significant forces be examined to understand the relationship between available water in a region and the variability and trends in environmental, social, and economic factors that are of utmost importance in the formulation of water resources management policies. This study therefore reviewed recent literature from 2003 - 2019 to determine the significant indicators of virtual water trade at different spatiotemporal levels. The study examined and compared the major approaches to virtual water trade flows accounting, and also identified and discussed policy implications and future research options concerning the analysis of virtual water trade. Available information has shown that virtual water trade is significantly influenced by economic (GDP, Demand-Supply of goods and services), geographical (Distance), institutional (population) and environmental (water availability, arable land, precipitation) factors. Reports further show that the selection of a given approach for virtual water trade flows accounting will depend on the scope of the study, the available datasets, and other research preferences. Accordingly, this study suggests that the adoption of multidisciplinary approaches to virtual water trade, taking into consideration the spatial and temporal variations in water resources availability and the complexity of environmental and socioeconomic factors will be pivotal for establishing the basis for the conservation of water resources worldwide.

• Korea Trade Review
• /
• v.47 no.3
• /
• pp.75-92
• /
• 2022

This study aims to analyze the International trade network of Water transport service using Social Network Analysis for defining the status of Korean Water transport industry. This study use World Input-Output Table of Asian Development Bank from 2000 to 2020 and build the International trade matrix of Water transport service from that. Therefore, this study analyze Out-degree centrality, In-degree centrality and betweenness centrality of Korea and other main countries in the matrix of World Water transport industry. As a result, Korea rank above 10th in the all centralities and the total output also rank 8th in the world, therefore, this study show the importance of Korean Water transport industry in the world. However, Singapore has the highest centrality in the world, even though China has the largest Total output among 63 countries.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
• /
• 2016.05a
• /
• pp.190-190
• /
• 2016

The Water, Energy, and Food (WEF) nexus is an emerging concept for sustainable resources planning and management. The three valuable resources are inevitably interconnected, that is, it takes water to produce energy; it takes energy to extract, treat, and distribute water; and both water and energy are required to produce food. Although it is challenging to fully understand the complicated interdependency, a few studies have been devoted to interpret the concept and develop the assessment tools. The tools were mainly developed for nation-wide simulations without considering inter-basin or inter-state resources trade. This study tries to present an idea to develop and implement the WEF nexus simulation model in regional scale by advancing the existing nation-wide model with additional capability to simulate the inter-basin trade. This simulation could help local planners and engineers to determine optimal policies and infrastructure solutions to reach and ensure local demand satisfaction. The simulation model is implemented in hypothetical areas with different conditions of WEF demands and supplies. Although the inter-basin trade scenarios are simulated manually, it shows that the inter-basin resources trade could enhance the resources security for a longer time period. In future, an optimization model might be developed to provide the automatic calculation to reach optimum amount of WEF for the trade, which can be a helpful tool in decision making process.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
• /
• 2022.05a
• /
• pp.161-161
• /
• 2022

Despite the impressive development of water infrastructure and management in recent decades, Korea still faces a number of threats to water security owing to such factors as climate change. This puts the country at the top spot amongst the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in terms of water stress. It is suggested that increasing food imports and decreasing domestic food production can contribute to water and land savings and in extension, to increased water and land security. This study therefore aimed at analyzing the impact of virtual water import through food trade on the water and land savings in Korea. It was concluded that over the period 2000 - 2017, significant amounts of national water and land was saved through the importation of major upland crops. In addition, we estimated the virtual water trade (VWT) that refers to the trade of water embedded in food products. The results showed a significant increase in the amount of virtual water traded over the study period.

• Proceedings of the Korea Water Resources Association Conference
• /
• 2018.05a
• /
• pp.153-153
• /
• 2018

Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus is a new holistic resources management concept that considers the interconnections among resources for sustainable resources planning and management. The current challenge is to fulfill the required demand in the lack of available resources. A traditional way to provide more available resource is by increase in production, but it caused increment of indirect demand of other interlinked resources. Importing resources from other area (where local supply is redundant) is another option to secure local resources with additional economic expenditure. The WEF nexus-trading model adapts the previously developed nationwide nexus simulation model with additional input parameters and functions to simulate trading scenarios. In general, the analysis starts with the quantification of local resources deficit (potential importing amount) and redundancy (potential exporting amount) of each area. Then, a trade module is initiated by determining possible donor area and importation amount. Finally, the nexus simulation for all area is re-run to determine final resources supply-demand results including the trading amount. The trade option provides an opportunity to meet local demands without draining local resources. However, the production capability of donor area may limit the importation amount. The newly developed trade option allows more alternatives for stakeholders to determine resources management plans.

• Water for future
• /
• v.52 no.12
• /
• pp.80-86
• /
• 2019

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
• /
• v.53 no.spc1
• /
• pp.765-772
• /
• 2020

The amount of water resources identified by water balance analysis are usually used to formulate water resources plans. However, this does not consider the trade in goods between countries. It is possible to use virtual water to come up with a supply and demand plan by looking at the export and import of products. This is because it looks comprehensively at the direct water use (water resources within the region) and indirect water use (water resources of other regions from imported products). Yet South Korea does not actively use the concept of virtual water in the national water resources plan. There is difficulty with calculating and identifying the appropriate virtual water amount as many of the research papers present only few of the cases or omit the calculation process. This paper introduces detailed water footprint values for calculating the virtual water trade for South Korea. The international movement, water footprint, and virtual water trade of agricultural and livestock products are presented and compared to existing research. The water footprint and virtual water research in this paper can be utilized as baseline data for future researchers.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
• /
• v.53 no.9
• /
• pp.691-699
• /
• 2020

South Korea's available water resources per capita is very small compared to global average as there is a high population on small land. Thus, it is imperative to secure water resources for the safe livelihood of the citizens. As an advanced, industrialized country, South Korean economic dependence on agricultural has greatly lowered. Unless South Korea utilizes foreign water resources, it is impossible to provide agricultural and livestock products the same as current levels. However, virtual water-related research in South Korea is still inadequate. When establishing the water resources plan, it does not consider the international trade of virtual water. This research aims to solve this issue by analyzing the international virtual water trends focusing on South Korea. Consequently, the export and import of virtual water trade was identified according to country and item for 248 countries and South Korea. According to the results, South Korea's agricultural and livestock virtual water has much higher imports than exports, which outputs with agricultural by-products being the main import. In 2018, South Korea imported 72.2 billion ㎥, which is 29 times the exported amount of 2.5 billion ㎥. The research results can be used as baseline data for establishing the national water resources plan in the future.

• Journal of Korean Society for Quality Management
• /
• v.49 no.2
• /
• pp.171-181
• /
• 2021

Purpose: This study aims to identify effective ways to induce water resources conservation for general water consumers. Methods: In order to find the core factors to motivate water saving behavior for general consumers, this study utilized the theory of reasoned action which is well known as one of the most frequently used theory in consumer's green behavior analysis. Results: Among six hypothesized relationships in the research model four were proved to be statistically significant. The relationship between attitude toward water savings and the water saving behavior was found to be significant but only through the behavioral intention. Conclusion: Consumers with positive attitude on water conservation will practice water saving behavior with behavioral intention. However, consumers only with high knowledge on water conservation naturally and habitually practice water saving behavior without recognizing the intention to save the water. Thus, both positive attitude on the water conservation and subjective norm must be satisfied since the two factors tend to lead to actual green behavior using different psychological routes.