Regional water footprint evaluation in China: A case of Liaoning

The building sector is amongst the major resource consuming and waste generating sectors of the economy. The paradigm of the circular economy has the potential to overcome the problems resulted due to adoption of the linear economic model by the building sector. The circular economy offers a new perspective for industrial ecosystems including materials and products being fed back into the supply chain as resources, thereby resulting in reduced consumption of primary resources and waste generation. The research on circular economy increased rapidly during recent years; however, a research gap exists on the assessment of current state and barriers to the circular economy in the building sector of developing countries. This study has developed and used a circular economy assessment scale for the building sector of developing countries. It is found that the current state of circular economy implementation in the building sector is unsatisfactory. Out of the seven circular economy dimensions used for analysis, the energy dimension showed the best performance and the waste dimension showed the worst performance. Serious steps are required by all the stakeholders of the building sector to improve the adoption of the circular economy. Furthermore, interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and matrice d’Impacts croises-multipication appliqué an classment (MICMAC) techniques are used to identify and classify the key barriers to the circular economy. It is found that a lack of environmental regulations and laws is driving the rest of the barriers to the circular economy. Equally critical is the lack of public awareness and support from public institutions. Finally, a mitigation framework for the building sector of developing countries is proposed, which is an addition to the circular economy existing body of knowledge. The proposed framework could serve as a guideline for decision and policymakers.

Water Footprint is an indicator recently developed with the goal of quantifying the virtual content of water in products and/or services. It can also be used to identify the worldwide virtual water trade. Water Footprint is composed of three parts (green, blue and grey waters) that make the assessment complete in accordance with the Water Footprint Network and with the recent ISO14046.

The importance of Water Footprint is linked to the need of taking consciousness about water content in products and services and of the achievable changes in productions, diets and market trades. In this study, a literature review has been completed on Water Footprint of agricultural productions. In particular, the focus was paid on crops for the production of food and bioenergy.

From the review, the development of the Water Footprint concept emerged: in early studies the main goal was to assess products' water trade on a global scale, while in the subsequent years, the goal was the rigorous quantification of the three components for specific crops and in specific geographical areas. In the most recent assessments, similarities about the methodology and the employed tools emerged.

For 96 scientific articles on Water Footprint indicator of agricultural productions, this literature review reports the main results and analyses weaknesses and strengths. Seventy-eight percent of studies aimed to quantify Water Footprint, while the remaining 22% analysed methodology, uncertainty, future trends and comparisons with other footprints. It emerged that most studies that quantified Water Footprint concerned cereals (33%), among which maize and wheat were the most investigated crops. In 46% of studies all the three components were assessed, while in 18% no indication about the subdivision was given; in the remaining 37%, only blue or green and blue components were quantified.

China's booming economy has brought increasing pressures on its water resources. The water scarcity problem in China is characterized by a mismatch between the spatial distributions of water resources, economic development and other primary factors of production, which leads to the separation of production and consumption of water-intensive products. In this paper, we quantify the scale and structure of virtual water trade and consumption-based water footprints at the provincial level in China based on a multi-regional input–output model. We found that virtual water withdrawals and consumption embodied in domestic trade amounts to 184 billion m³ and 101 billion m³ in 2007, respectively, which is equivalent to 38% and 39% of national total fresh water withdrawals and consumption, respectively. Virtual water trade embodied in domestic trade is about two times as much as virtual water embodied in China's international exports. Water footprint in all four municipalities, i.e., Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing, depends heavily on virtual water inflow from other provinces. China has a north-to-south net VWT pattern which is roughly the opposite of the distribution of its water resources. In addition to water efficiency improvement measures, re-shaping the water-trade nexus can be a significant complementary tool to address local water scarcity problems.

Citation Excerpt :

Water scarcity, water pollution, and water-related waste threaten humanity globally, largely due to the limited supply of freshwater on the planet, the unbalanced distribution of water resources, and the excessive consumption of water from the growing population and its economic development. China is facing severe water shortages; the northern part of the country has an average freshwater availability of 760 cubic meter per capita per year, 25% below the internationally accepted threshold for water scarcity. Agriculture in northwest China relies on annual precipitation of 50–500 mm, 70% of which occurs from July to September, and annual evaporation from 1500 to 2600 mm. In the Hexi Corridor regions where annual precipitation is below 150 mm, farming largely depends on irrigation with water from Qilian Mountain snowmelt. However, permanent snow on the mountain has moved upwards at a rate of 0.2–1.0 m annually, and groundwater in the valley has declined at a rate of 0.5–1.8 m year⁻¹. Consequently, some natural oases, along the old Silk Road, have shrunk or disappeared and wells have dried up. At the meantime, some farms use irrigation water at a rate as high as 11,000 m³ ha⁻¹, much greater than crop water requirements for high yield. In recent years, many innovative research projects have dealt with the water issue in arid and semiarid northwestern China. In this chapter, we summarize some key water-saving technologies developed from some of these recently completed research projects, and discuss integrated and innovative approaches for the development of water-saving agricultural systems. Our goal is to encourage the use of innovative water-saving technologies to reduce agricultural water use, increase crop water-use efficiency, and improve agricultural productivity.