| Wetland is crucial for biodiversity and most of the ecosystem service functions on the earth because of its unique ecological attributes.It also has strong relation with social development and human welfare.Unsustainable water resource utilities,such as overuse of underground water and over-extraction of surface water,end up consuming huge amount of precious water for commercial purposes.As a consequence,wetland ecosystems have been facing many ecological threats,which include shrinking of geological area and degradation in function.As fresh water resource demand is increasing,ecological water resources are rapidly decreased,thus disturbing the natural water resource distribution in wetlands as well.Water forms the backbone of commercial,social and economic development,which in turn,directly affects the wetland's ecological functions and sustainability,leading to area reduction and function degradation.The key scientific research questions in the field of water resource management and wetland ecology preservation are exploring better ways of water consumption for regional economic activities,sustainably allocating water resources for economic development and ecological protection.The aim of this research is to provide scientific implication to relieve regional water pressure and promote wetland restoration while sustainably meeting huge demand of water.We conducted industrial water consumption research from the perspective of water footprint,especially the industrial water footprint.The parameters that are focused by this study include:water quantity and water quality,indirect water consumption,water interaction,relationships among sectors and development of an effective water resource regulation system to manage water demand.We selected Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration,the so-called Jing-Jin-Ji region,as our research area since it is one of the most seriously water scarce regions in the world.The research methodology evaluated the following factors:current status,driving forces,network structure analysis,and water resource regulation patterns.On the basis of sectorial disaggregation and driving forces for water footprint,we developed a novel water resource regulation model that sets water resource constraint as the target and aligns water demand management as the orientation.It provides a comprehensive scientific report for the most stringent water resources and their effective management for regional water security.The major foundings of this research are as follows:We successfully developed industrial water footprint assessment model through coupling multi-regional input-output model and GEPIC model.Then,industrial water footprint was analyzed from both production and consumption perspectives.The results illustrated that water footprint in economic sectors measured from a production perspective differs from that measured from consumption perspective.From production perspective,in Jing-Jin-Ji region,blue water footprint is 17676×106m3(164 m3/Cap),green water footprint is 20829×106m3(193 m3/Cap)and grey water footprint is 528920×106m3(4911 m3/Cap).Here,more than 65%of production-based water footprint is exported as virtual water,of which,Hebei exported 80%of total virtual water.From consumption perspective,in Jing-Jin-Ji region,blue water footprint is 21346×106m3(198 m3/Cap),green water footprint is 50272×106m3(467 m3/Cap)and grey water footprint is 764682×106m3(7100m3/Cap).Virtual water import has dominant implications for the consumption-based water footprint.Beijing has the highest import dependency,at 90%.Tianjin is ranked second.Food-related products,such as agriculture,food and tobacco processing produce require the greatest amount of imported virtual water.Furthermore,we developed driving force analysis model by coupling multi-region input-output models and utilizing structure decomposition analysis model to assess driving discipline for production-based industrial water footprint from 2002 to 2012.The results show that blue water footprint has reduced at 2613×106m3,and green water footprint also decreased 706×106m3.However,grey water footprint has increased at 282656×106 m3.In the proportion of increased virtual water export,the water footprint of food-related sectors comprises the biggest portion,followed by construction and hotels,and food and beverage outlets.Conversely,direct water consumption has been the key driving force responsible for restraining the increase of water footprint in Jing-Jin-Ji region.This finding is consistent with the historical trend of total water footprint.As a result,it is inferred that the change in water footprint for Jing-Jin-Ji region is primarily affected by the rate of direct water consumption.Ultimately,final demand effects mainly affect the growth of all colored water footprints.We used ecological network technique to analyze blue water footprint and its interaction among sectors in 2012,in order to explore industrial adjustment and other key pathways.The results show that indirect water footprint has the biggest absolute volume and ratio in water footprint network.Also,the influence of indirect flow intensity on the water footprint network is much more than direct flow intensity.On sectorial scale,60%of the total network flow originates from the following sectors:agriculture,construction,food and tobacco processing.Additionally,agriculture and electricity,heating,gas and water production and supply control influence Jing-Jin-Ji water system.These sectors are further controlled by freight transport,warehousing and mining sectors,playing a pivotal role in industrial adjustment.Amongst these,40%of exploitative relationships have been substantially transformed through indirect water footprint trading among industrial components in Jing-Jin-Ji region.Food and tobacco processing,along with other light manufacturers has lower network path efficiency than other sectors.On a system scale,Jing-Jin-Ji region's system scored low,implying that the system is unsustainable with low efficiency and high recovery;there is still a big space for improvement.In order to effectively relieve regional water pressure and promoting wetland restoration in Jing-Jin-Ji region,we introduced mixed input-output model with supply-constraint for water resource regulation.Moreover,we developed 120 industrial adjustment scenarios based on the current water pressure level and related water policies,assessing their effects on economics and social sustainability.The results show that wetland area will increase 188 km2,115 km2 and 2462.9 km2 when industrial adjustment policy is applied in Jing-Jin-Ji region,subsequently,ecological benefit will also increase 5.27 billion RMB,1.99 billion RMB and 60.99 billion RMB respectively.Reducing production activities in agriculture result in least loss in GDP and employment,decreasing 1.12 billion RMB,0.89 billion RMB and 29.4 billion RMB separately.Furthermore,it will lead to the unemployment of 100 thousand,38 thousand and 1441 thousand people.The overall industrial adjustments in this region resulted in average 53.1 billion RMB loss,accounting for 1%of total GDP.Meanwhile,the average number of unemployed people is 1778 thousand,accounting for 3%of working population.Then,we calculated the ratio of economic loss and employment reduction as the evaluation index to measure the effects of industrial structure adjustment.Thus,10 optimal scenarios were built having taken both economic loss and social sustainability into account as reference for guiding future industrial structure adjustment policies.Based on the above stated results,we have proposed the following suggestions toward water resource protection and wetland restoration of Jing-Jing-Ji region:Firstly,a "Virtual Water Strategy" can effectively alleviate water stress at the regional scale.For this purpose,financial compensation from water receiving regions to water supplying regions has been applied for achieving water management targets.Secondly,following an export-based economic development model would worsen Jing-Jin-Ji's water stress situation,impair water ecosystems,and potentially crowd out internal production.Therefore,in order to reduce unbalanced water losses,it is recommended that economic dependence on the export of water intensive and low value-added agricultural products be reduced for a sustainable virtual water balance and reducing pressure on internal water resources.Lastly,adjusting industrial structure is an important approach to alleviating regional water stress.In this regard,water resource model with supply constraint can provide scientific technical support for selecting water resource regulation schemes.Thereby and impact assessments can be constructed for measuring the effect of social development on water resource endowment and wetland ecosystem.This is widely used in water policy building,as well as for wetland protection and water management. |
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