Deceleration of China’s human water use and its key drivers

Abstract

Increased human water use combined with climate change have aggravated water scarcity from the regional to global scales. However, the lack of spatially detailed datasets limits our understanding of the historical water use trend and its key drivers. Here, we present a survey-based reconstruction of China’s sectoral water use in 341 prefectures during 1965 to 2013. The data indicate that water use has doubled during the entire study period, yet with a widespread slowdown of the growth rates from 10.66 km3⋅y−2before 1975 to 6.23 km3⋅y−2in 1975 to 1992, and further down to 3.59 km3⋅y−2afterward. These decelerations were attributed to reduced water use intensities of irrigation and industry, which partly offset the increase driven by pronounced socioeconomic development (i.e., economic growth, population growth, and structural transitions) by 55% in 1975 to 1992 and 83% after 1992. Adoptions for highly efficient irrigation and industrial water recycling technologies explained most of the observed reduction of water use intensities across China. These findings challenge conventional views about an acceleration in water use in China and highlight the opposing roles of different drivers for water use projections.

Effects of the Policy and Human Intervention on the Infrastructure-Environment Nexus in China

“…We address that efficiency improvement and non-conventional water resource utilization, both being policy-oriented, could make great contributions (33% and 23%, respectively) to covering the blue water gap between the BAU scenario and the NPC scenario. Given the previous finding that the implementation of policy initiatives relating to water use and economic development has been significantly influencing the national water withdrawal and water stress situations in China [18,19], our study further strengthens this hypothesis from the perspective of infrastructure development and its environmental performances influenced by environmental policies and human intervention. Last but not least, due to the long life spans of infrastructure, future generations are locked into operating and maintaining historically-developed stocks and the specific use patterns of infrastructure, which may no longer meet future needs of resources efficiency and climate change mitigation [47,48].…”

Irrigation, damming, and streamflow fluctuations of the Yellow River

“…Instead of increasing river water withdrawals, the growing water demand appeared to have been balanced by improving water use efficiency during the study period (Yin et al, 2020;Zhou et al, 2019). Our simulation reveals that the impact of irrigation on streamflow may be positive under special situations, which was also shown in one previous study (Kustu et al, 2011).…”

“…In fact, our simulated patterns are very similar with a set of simulations by GHMs ( Fig. S2 from Liu et al (2019)). Dislike some catchment scale studies, which pursue simulated discharge as accurate as possible under well calibration or by using a suite of observed inputs, our primary aim is to implement related interactive mechanisms in a physical-based land surface model in order to extrapolate our experience for long term 25 projection under climate change.…”

“…the mismatches between simulations and observations, we inferred the potential impacts of multiple medium reservoirs and five large irrigation districts (e.g., the Hetao Plateau), which were ignored in most previous hydrological studies.More than 60% of rivers all of the world are disturbed by human activities (Grill et al, 2019) contributing to approximately 63% of surface water withdrawal (Hanasaki et al, 2018). River water is used for agriculture, industry, drinking water supply, and electricity generation (Hanasaki et al, 2018;Wada et al, 2014), these usages being influenced by direct anthropogenic drivers and by climate change (Haddeland et al, 2014; Piao et al, 2007Piao et al, , 2010 Yin et al, 2020;Zhou et al, 2019). In order 5 to meet the fast-growing water demand in populated areas and to control floods (Wada et al, 2014), reservoirs have been built up for regulating the temporal distribution of river water (Biemans et al, 2011; Hanasaki et al, 2006) leading to a massive perturbation of the variability of river discharges.…”

Linking the Environmental Pressures of China’s Capital Development to Global Final Consumption of the Past Decades and into the Future

“… 34 Future capital development in China needs to specify both “quantity” (more than $94 trillion US dollars predicted by 2040) 31 and “quality” (resource-efficient, low-impact). Technology advancements, a major driver that historically reduced the consumption of key resources (e.g., water, or energy) and the emissions, 35 , 36 will also be a promising means for future sustainable capital development.…”