Achieving sustainable soil and water protection: The perspective of agricultural water price regulation on environmental protection

Abstract

With the development of Chinese economy, more and more attention has been paid to environmental protection, the implementation of water price policy affects economic and environmental changes in China. This paper analyzes the impact of water price policy on agricultural land use and the scale of water pollution discharge in 240 cities in China between 2001 and 2017, by including data from China Urban Statistical Yearbook and China Land & Resources Almanac. The theoretical analysis of this study indicates that the optimal scale of pollution depends on the local initial endowment, economic investment capital and the marginal cost of environmental pollution caused by government's economic activities. Furtherly, the economic activities have a worsening impact on environmental pollution, but when the government implements environmental protection and water price policy measures in response to environmental pollution caused by economic activities, it has a significant impact on the decline in the scale of pollution. The government has promoted the pollution suppression model in the formulation of water prices, which has internalized the external cost of pollution in economic activities and can effectively reduce the scale of agricultural water pollution discharge.

Integrated agricultural water pricing reform (IAWPR) in China: a state-of-the-art review with focus on strategic significance, policy design, reform process and case reform effect

“…If the price of water does not reflect its true cost, this will affect the most valuable uses of water resources even in water-rich and developed regions. Some literature (Rogers et al, 2002;Iglesias & Blanco, 2008;Amayreh et al, 2011;Chou et al, 2020) show that increased water prices improve managerial efficiencies in the agricultural sector, reduce water consumption, provide economic incentives to reduce water losses and facilitate re-allocation from irrigation to domestic and industrial, increase funding for irrigation support and improve the O&M efficiency of irrigation systems, promote water-saving technologies, and so on. These advantages of water prices are also evident in water-rich and developed regions.…”

“…Zhu et al (2018) used a Bayesian network to analyze the current water rights trading and management systems in Xinjiang with the participation of stakeholders and experts. Chou et al (2020) analyzed the impact of water price policy on agricultural land use in China. The above studies showed the great significance of water prices in solving the problem of water shortage.…”

Selecting models for the estimation of reference evapotranspiration for irrigation scheduling purposes

“…ETo can be used as basis to compute the evapotranspiration of different crops. To accomplish this, a crop coefficient (Kc) and a water stress coefficient (Ks) are used to convert ETo to the evapotranspiration of a particular crop, considering its development phase and the soil water availability [ 6 , 8 ].…”

“…Irrigation scheduling can be performed using different approaches, but it is commonly based on reference evapotranspiration (ETo), which is typically computed using meteorological data [2][3][4][5][6][7]. ETo can be used as basis to compute the evapotranspiration of different crops.…”

Assessing the Agricultural Water Savings–Economy–Ecological Environment System in an Arid Area of Northwest China Using a Water Rights Transaction Model

“…With an increasing amount of water transferred from agriculture to ecology, the conservation function of water resources plays a positive role in arid areas, for example in controlling soil desertification, restoring dry downstream lakes, and improving local climatic conditions. At the same time, from the perspective of greenhouse gas emissions, natural desert ecosystems produce lower CH 4 and N 2 O emissions than farmland ecosystems [3,[17][18][19][20].…”