Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment

Analysis on environmental impact for cotton economic in Tarim River Basin, Northwest China

Author(s):

Yufang Zhang *, Degang Yang

Recieved Date: 2014-01-12, Accepted Date: 2014-03-26

Abstract:

The success of economic development in some regions has left deep marks on resource availability and quality especially in the Tarim River Basin. It is the typical  agro-economic oasis, which mainly depends on water and land resource. Cotton is one of the chief cash crops and over 80-90% is sold as cotton lint in the national market every year. The major source of government revenue for most counties comes from cotton planting in Tarim River Basin, which is relatively poor with regards to water resources and has fragile ecological environment in Northwest China. This problem is exacerbated by agro-economic growth. Flourishing cotton trade activities with the other region have resulted in significant amounts of water withdrawal and environment pollution. Hence, the goal of this paper is to evaluate the cotton economic effects on local water resource via ‘virtual water flows’ with current inter-regional cotton, and assess the impact on local water and soil environment by employing statistical data. The average virtual water content of seed cotton is higher than national level and its blue water requirement is two folds of the worldwide level. It is relatively higher environmental costs than in the other area. For the period 1990–2005, nearly 4-8% of available natural waters of Tarim River watershed are exported by the interregional cotton trade, which East and Northeast areas are the largest receivers. Furthermore, the large scale of cotton production has significant environmental impact on the water quality and soil structure. The average level of the fertilizer application per hectare is continuously increasing, which is same to the change of water salinity. Besides, with plastic film mulching used extensively in cotton plant, the average quantity of residual plastic membrane is 189.376 kg/ha in the whole Tarim River basin. Impacts are typically cross-border. However, environmental resources are currently highly undervalued as there are often little or no costs associated with their consumption. The findings show that the environment cost to produce cotton in the Tarim River basin is higher than that in the other regions of China, but its profit is being ripped off by unfair trade policies set thousands of miles away, which drag down the price of cotton across region. The current economic type in Tarim River is not very favourable with regards to water resource allocation and efficiency.

Keywords:

Virtual water, green water, blue water, water quality, soil environment, Tarim River Basin

---

Journal: Journal of Food, Agriculture and Environment
Year: 2014
Volume: 12
Issue: 2
Category: Environment
Pages: 1054-1060

---

Full text for Subscribers

---

Information:

Note to users

The requested document is freely available only to subscribers/registered users with an online subscription to the Journal of Food, Agriculture & Environment. If you have set up a personal subscription to this title please enter your user name and password. All abstracts are available for free.

Article purchasing

If you like to purchase this specific document such as article, review or this journal issue, contact us. Specify the title of the article or review, issue, number, volume and date of the publication. Software and compilation, Science & Technology, all rights reserved. Your use of this website details or service is governed by terms of use. Authors are invited to check from time to time news or information.

---

Purchase this Article:   20 Purchase PDF Order Reprints for 15

---

Share this article :