Best Paper Awardee
Virtual water hegemony: the role of agribusiness in global water governance
Suvi Sojamo, Martin Keulertz, Jeroen Warner and John Anthony Allan
The recent global food crises have highlighted how the agro-food system tends to be subject to powerful agribusiness players, with thus far unidentified consequences for global water security. By connecting hydro-hegemony and virtual water concepts, this study illustrates the Western dominance over the virtual water embedded in international agro-food commodity trade flows. Accordingly, foreign direct investment in land by emerging Asian and Arab economies and their increased competition over the sources of global food supply chains appear as strategies to challenge the Western agribusiness “virtual water hegemony”.
- Suvi Sojamo is a PhD Researcher at the Water and Development Research Group, Aalto University, Finland
- Martin Keulertz received his Ph.D. in 2013 from the Department of Geography, London Water Research Group, King’s College London, UK, and is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant in the Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering at Purdue University, USA
- Jeroen Warner is an Associate Professor of Disaster Studies, Social Sciences Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands
- John Anthony (Tony) Allan is an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Geography, King’s College London, and Professorial Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK. He received the Stockholm Water Prize in 2008.