Data underlying the publication: Imported virtual water is scarcer than domestic water globally

When countries import products, they rely on other countries’ water resources to meet their demand. In this way, they reduce the need to consume domestic water. This imported water, referred to as virtual water, is a common strategy to address water scarcity. However, it remains unclear whether imported virtual water is scarcer or less scarce than domestic water, raising sustainability concerns. Our study reveals that over the past three decades, most countries have imported virtual water that is scarcer than their domestic supply. Trade has redistributed water scarcity rather than sustainability. We call for exploring opportunities to ensure that virtual water trade promotes sustainable water use instead of undermining it. <br>This dataset contains annual country-level virtual water imports, exports, and domestic water consumption, distinguishing sustainably consumed and overconsumed water. Bilateral virtual water trade per sector over the period of 2015-2019 is available on the Water Footprint Network website (https://tools.waterfootprint.org/virtual-water/#/world-map). The code of the crop model ACEA used in this study is freely available on GitHub (https://github.com/Han-Su22/ACEA). All the past and future published versions of ACEA are archived via Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10510933) via a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. FABIO and GLORIA could be retrieved from https://github.com/fineprint-global/fabio and https://ielab.info/labs/ielab-gloria, respectively. The code for constructing the hybrid MRIO is freely available on GitHub (https://github.com/Han-Su22/FABIO_Gloria). <br>All the code, input data, and output data required to reproduce the results in this study will be archived for at least 10 years after publication within the University of Twente, Multidisciplinary Water Management (MWM) group. The MWM group will make those available upon request.<br>The manuscript is under review and will be updated here once accepted.