Changing global cropping patterns to minimize national blue water scarcity

Chouchane, Hatem; Krol, Maarten S.; Hoekstra, Arjen Y.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-3015-2020

Articles | Volume 24, issue 6

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-3015-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-24-3015-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 24, issue 6

Research article

| Highlight paper

|

09 Jun 2020

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 09 Jun 2020

Changing global cropping patterns to minimize national blue water scarcity

Hatem Chouchane, Maarten S. Krol, and Arjen Y. Hoekstra

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Final revised paper (published on 09 Jun 2020)
Supplement to the final revised paper
Preprint (discussion started on 28 Oct 2019)
Supplement to the preprint

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Reviewer comment', Anonymous Referee #1, 12 Nov 2019
- AC2: 'Response to comments from reviewer RC1', Hatem Chouchane, 13 Dec 2019
RC2: 'Suggestions on revisions', Anonymous Referee #2, 06 Dec 2019
- AC3: 'Response to comments from reviewer RC2', Hatem Chouchane, 17 Dec 2019
AC1: 'Note to the editor and reviewers', Hatem Chouchane, 13 Dec 2019
RC3: 'comments', Anonymous Referee #3, 15 Dec 2019
- AC4: 'Response to comments from reviewer RC3', Hatem Chouchane, 21 Dec 2019
- AC5: 'Response to comments from reviewer RC3', Hatem Chouchane, 21 Dec 2019
EC1: 'Editor's comment', Gerrit H. de Rooij, 08 Jan 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

ED: Publish subject to revisions (further review by editor and referees) (08 Jan 2020) by Gerrit H. de Rooij

AR by Hatem Chouchane on behalf of the Authors (16 Apr 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Referee Nomination & Report Request started (24 Apr 2020) by Gerrit H. de Rooij

RR by Anonymous Referee #2 (07 May 2020)

RR by Anonymous Referee #1 (09 May 2020)

Suggestions for revision or reasons for rejection

General comments
In the revised version of the manuscript, the authors have somewhat revised their optimization approach, performed a sensitivity analysis, broadened their literature review, improved the clarity of presentation, and they have enhanced the discussion of the limitations and implications of their study.
I recommend to further improve the clarity of presentation, in both the abstract and the main text.

Specific comments

Abstract:
I would add that it is dominantly shifts in rainfed crops and only very limited expansion of irrigated areas that leads to a reduction of the global BWF, maybe as second but last sentence. In the last sentence you could express that in the future your study could be improved upon by considering subnational heterogeneity of water scarcity.

L31: delete “and international crop trade” as this is not the topic of the paper and just a logical consequence of changing crop production among countries.

L35: Replace” both differences in water productivities and water endowments” by “differences in country averages of both crop water productivity and renewable water resources”

L36: Replace “under the constraint of current global production per crop and current cropland areas” by “while keeping global production of each crop unchanged and preventing any increase of the sum of irrigated and rainfed harvested areas in each country”

L37: “The optimization …” Delete sentence.

L39: Replace “When allowing a maximum expansion of harvested area per crop per country of 10%” by “Even when allowing a maximum expansion of irrigated or rainfed harvested area per crop per country of only 10%”

L40: Replace “In this case, we could achieve a reduction of the current blue water footprint of crop production in the world of 21% and a decrease of the total global harvested and irrigated areas of 2% and 10% respectively.” by “In this case, we could achieve a reduction of the global blue water footprint of crop production of 21% and a decrease of the global total harvested and irrigated harvested areas of 2% and 10%, respectively.”

Main text: Please review the clarity and precision of wording throughout the main text.

L78: “The trade in ‘embedded water’ (also known as 78 virtual water trade) is the hidden flow of water if food or other commodities are traded from one place to another (Allan, 79 1998). “ Please explain the term “embedded” or (preferably) do not use this term et al. and explain the virtual water is the amount of water used for the production of a good.

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ED: Publish subject to technical corrections (10 May 2020) by Gerrit H. de Rooij

Short summary

Previous studies on water saving through food trade focussed either on comparing water productivities among countries or on analysing food trade in relation to national water endowments. Here, we consider, for the first time, both differences in water productivities and water endowments to analyse national comparative advantages. Our study reveals that blue water scarcity can be reduced to sustainable levels by changing cropping patterns while maintaining current levels of global production.