Zhong Honglin, Zhang Shiyu, Zhang Xinyu, Yu Yang, Li Dan, Wang Saige, Xiao Jingyi, Tian Peipei
Institute of Blue and Green Development, Shandong University, Weihai 264209, China; Academy of Plateau Science and Sustainability, Qinghai Normal University, Xining 810016, China.
Institute of Blue and Green Development, Shandong University, Weihai 264209, China.
Sci Total Environ. 2024 Nov 15;951:175539. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.175539. Epub 2024 Aug 14.
Agricultural product demand driven by population and economic growth poses challenges to water, land, and energy utilization, and this increasing local demand is largely met through trade. However, the efficiency and nexus pattern of the water, land, and energy embodied in agricultural trade are not well understood. This study uses the multi-regional input-output framework to analyze agricultural water, land, and energy utilization efficiency of resource footprints per unit economic output as well as their transfer and nexus pattern in global agricultural trade for 1995-2019. The results show that many international agricultural trade paths are inefficient in the water, land, and energy resource use because the agricultural products in these paths are exported from relatively low- to high-efficiency economies/regions. However, these inefficient transfer paths show an increasing trend over the study period. Regarding the water-land-energy nexus, conflicts are prevalent in land-energy and water-energy couplings. Most trade paths are conducted to alleviate the pressure on a specific resource, inadvertently increasing the pressure on other resources. Although agricultural trade is important for meeting global food demands, it is not consistently beneficial to the local environment when considering agricultural resources use efficiency. This study is expected to improve our understanding of agricultural trade impacts to the agricultural resources and support the sustainable development of global agriculture.
由人口和经济增长驱动的农产品需求给水资源、土地资源和能源利用带来了挑战，而这种不断增长的本地需求很大程度上是通过贸易来满足的。然而，农业贸易中所体现的水、土地和能源的效率及关联模式尚未得到充分理解。本研究采用多区域投入产出框架，分析了1995 - 2019年全球农业贸易中单位经济产出的农业水资源、土地资源和能源利用效率，以及它们的转移和关联模式。结果表明，许多国际农业贸易路径在水资源、土地资源和能源利用方面效率低下，因为这些路径中的农产品是从效率相对较低的经济体/地区出口到效率较高的经济体/地区。然而，在研究期间，这些低效的转移路径呈上升趋势。关于水 - 土地 - 能源的关联，土地 - 能源和水 - 能源耦合中的冲突普遍存在。大多数贸易路径的开展是为了缓解对某一特定资源的压力，却无意中增加了对其他资源的压力。尽管农业贸易对于满足全球粮食需求很重要，但从农业资源利用效率的角度来看，它对当地环境并不总是有益的。本研究有望增进我们对农业贸易对农业资源影响的理解，并支持全球农业的可持续发展。
