| Eradicating poverty in all forms is the first goal of the UN's 2030 Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs).By 2017,the global poverty rate is 9.2%.Eighty percent of people under extreme poverty line live in rural areas,and more than 65 percent depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.The poverty rate among those who rely on agriculture is four times higher than among those engaged in non-agriculture.For the poor people living in rural areas,water and land resources are not only the material for survival,but also the means of production.In this paper,we mainly cognize global poverty from the perspective of water and land resource utilization.Based on big geodata,we evaluate water and land development globally,and analyze the linkage between water&land utilization and poverty with support of data mining method.Finally,the Zambezi Basin,the region with high poverty rate,is specifically analyzed to assess the development of land and water using indicators that is highly related with poverty rate.And the potential of its land and water resources utilization is analyzed with big geodata.The main conclusions are as follows.(1)As of 2015,the global average poverty rate is about 10%and the population living below the extreme poverty line is about 731 million people.The poor population is mainly distributed in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.Using an exploratory spatial data analysis method,poverty rates are found to be significantly spatially dependent,exhibiting significant clustering characteristics.Significant H-H clustering emerged in sub-Saharan Africa and significant L-L clustering was found in Europe.(2)Based on big geodata,we evaluated the development of water from three aspects including water resources utilization,hydro-energy utilization and reservoir construction.The linkage between them and global poverty is identified using the association rule mining method.we found that there is a strong association and correlation between reservoir density,the ratio of small hydropower development,water resources utilization and poverty.Water utilization rate is influenced by the available water per capita and the poverty level,and the utilization rate of water resources in poor areas is usually very low.In countries with poverty rates above 38.7%,the ratio of water use is typically below 6%.The density of reservoirs in countries with high poverty rates is usually very low.When the poverty rate exceeds 5%,it is found that 83.1%of the countries usually have a reservoir density of less than 0.31/10~4 km~2.Countries with a high ratio of small hydropower development usually have a low poverty rate.When the ratio of small hydropower development is greater than 27%,the poverty rate in 78.0%of the countries is usually less than 4.9%.(3)Based on big geodata,we assessed the development of arable land use in three aspects:crop intensification,crop extensification and agricultural inputs,and analyzed the relationship between them and poverty separately.We found that the crop intensification,as reflected by the ratio of actual to potential yield,was highly correlated with poverty.and the lower the poverty rate is accompanied with the higher the ratio of actual to potential yield.The ratio of actual to potential cropland area was highly correlated with poverty through a nonlinear relationship.Fertilizer consumption was also highly significantly and non-linearly correlated with the poverty rate.In terms of agricultural inputs,fertilizer consumption in non-poor countries was 198.64 kg/ha;while in poor countries,it was only 28.59 kg/ha.(4)The Zambezi Basin was selected as a typical cluster area of poor countries in the world.The indicators from land and water development highly related with poverty rate was used to assessed the land and water utilization in the Zambezi Basin.Based on big geodata and scenario analysis,we analyze the potential of arable land and water resources development in the basin.Based on water resources management,the potential for irrigation expansion and reservoir construction are considered.We are trying to solve the problem of the relative lack of ground data in the basin with support of big geodata.We found that:the water resources development potential in the basin is huge,and the average water resources utilization rate in the basin is 2.84%.The ratio of small hydropower development in the basin is 6.21%.The reservoir density is also at a low level.The ratio of actual to potential yield in the basin is about 0.23,and the gap between actual and potential yields is large.The expansion arable land in all the countries in the basin is at a low level,and the reserve arable land resources in the basin are abundant.The averaged fertilizer consumption is about 35 kg/ha,while the global average fertilizer use is 140 kg/ha,so there is still much space for improvement in terms of agricultural inputs in the Zambezi Basin. |
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