Diferent indicators such as water scarcity indices and renewable water resources amount bring to light the essential needs for better water resources management in Iran, where groundwater withdrawal for agriculture uses intensely. More than 90 percent of national water uses is dedicated to agriculture where water efficiency is not satisfactory. Virtual water trade, as a strategy to water resource management in globale scale, refer to “the hidden flow of water if food or other commodities are traded from one place to another place”. Water footprint changes dramaticly in temporal and spatial scale and there is a great differences in water footprint of a product when it breaks down in to the blue, green and gray water footprint. It is discussed that how consumption in one place can impacts on water resources elsewhere while in many cases, virtual water trade help to save water globally. Amounts of water saving in Iran which is resulted from international trade of wheat and agricultural products in 5 year (period 1997-2001), is reported 2×109 m3 and 5×109 m3 respectively. Although net virtual water import of Iran is between 5-25 billion m3/yr, but it is necessary to reorganize its virtual water trade when agriculture is dramatically dependant on blue water and reveals unsustainable groundwater consumption. Finally, several strategies to improve water use efficiency at different levels (user level, river basin level and global level) discussed and it concluded that there is an essential need for global water cooperations while we should work on so many challenges.
