Abstract
AbstractIn the context of the freshwater crisis, accounting for water withdrawal could help planners better regulate water use in different sectors to combat water scarcity. However, the water withdrawal statistics in China are patchy, and the water data across all sectors at the city level appear to be relatively insufficient. Hence, we develop a general framework to, for the first time, estimate the water withdrawal of 58 economic–social–environmental sectors in cities in China. This methodology was applied because only inconsistent water statistics collected from different data sources at the city level are available. We applied it to 18 representative Chinese cities. Different from conventional perceptions that agriculture is usually the largest water user, industrial and household water withdrawal may also occupy the largest percentages in the water‐use structure of some cities. The discrepancy among annual household water use per capita in the urban areas of different cities is relatively small (as is the case for rural areas), but that between urban and rural areas is large. As a result, increased attention should be paid to controlling industrial and urban household water use in particular cities. China should specifically prepare annual water accounts at the city level and establish a timetable to tackle water scarcity, which is a basic step toward efficient and sustainable water crisis mitigation.
Highlights
Freshwater is a vital resource worldwide (Stewart, 2012; Showstack, 2013)
A methodology was developed to estimate the water withdrawal of 58 economic–social–environmental sectors for cities in China based on the China High Resolution Emission Gridded Database and previous Water Resources Bulletins
This methodology can be applied to the different water statistics collected from cities and provinces; here, six consistent water-use sectors are used, which helped in combining separate water-use data into one consolidated information set
Summary
Freshwater is a vital resource worldwide (Stewart, 2012; Showstack, 2013). The water resource per capita in China is only one-quarter of the world average, and China is listed as one of the 13 water-scarce nations around the world (Chapagain & Hoekstra, 2008; Liu et al, 2017). Two-thirds of the cities in China suffer from freshwater scarcity (Qiao & Liu, 2014), and there are restrictions on the use of water by households and industries. China applied the most stringent water resource management system nationwide in 2011 to conserve water, including the ThreeRedline regulations in 2011 and the Water-Ten in 2015, a draft was not proposed until June 2015, and only a few cities had begun installing water meters to record every drop since December 2017. If the volume of water withdrawal is implicit, it is difficult to regulate water demand, let alone eliminate the over extraction of water and assess the intensity of water use (such as the water consumption per industrial value added or the irrigation efficiency coefficient). Collating and estimating sectoral water withdrawal data at the city level is a basic first step toward increasing water conservation. Industry, construction, services, household and environment into 58 subsectors
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