Water Resource Scarcity and Social Adaptive Capacity for Regional Sustainable Development - A Case Study of Beijing and Tianjin

Abstract

The adaptive capacity to water resource scarcity is closely connected to social and economic issues and it is one of the key factors of the regional sustainable development. Accurate evaluation of the adaptive capacity is an important factor to understand the development potential of a region. Through introducing the concept of social adaptive ability, this paper combines social adaptive ability with the dynamic evaluation of water resource scarcity and sustainable supply capacity as a new evaluation method. The data from two provincial-level municipalities of China (Beijing and Tianjin) are selected as a case to evaluate regional sustainable development. The results show that social adaptive ability can increase water supply capacity and provide strong support for regional sustainable development.