Article Dans Une Revue Communications Earth & Environment Année : 2025

Water-saving strategies across prefectures should target the manufacturing and agriculture sectors in China

Zongyong Zhang
Yuli Shan
Martin R Tillotson
Xu Zhao
  • Fonction : Auteur
Dandan Zhao
Hong Yang
  • Fonction : Auteur
Jingwen Huo
  • Fonction : Auteur
Zhao Zeng
  • Fonction : Auteur
Xian Li
  • Fonction : Auteur
Heran Zheng
Bofeng Cai
  • Fonction : Auteur
Wanqing Wang
  • Fonction : Auteur
Wang Kai
  • Fonction : Auteur
Guanlin Li
  • Fonction : Auteur
Geng Niu
  • Fonction : Auteur
Dabo Guan
Junguo Liu
Yu Hao
  • Fonction : Auteur

Résumé

Water scarcity is a global challenge in many emerging economies, including China. China is one of the most extensive freshwater users and has set water efficiency improvement goals for 2030 at the prefecture level. However, no systematic water use and savings comparison exists across prefectures and sectors. Here, we used datasets of water withdrawal for 10,608 industrial and 1715 agricultural sub-sectors for 343 prefectures, and explored the opportunities to reduce water use. Results show that 10% of the least water-efficient industrial sub-sectors represent a disproportionate 46% water use. 18.9 km 3 (±3.2%) water saving in industry and 50.3 km 3 (±2.3%) in agriculture could be achieved, equivalent to Russia's annual demand. A minority of sectors, including cloth(ing)-and chemicalmanufacturing, rice-, vegetable-and fruit-cultivation, could contribute the most to water savings. Our study is essential for identifying water use and efficiency information for individual prefectures and sectors.

In the coming decades, climatic and societal changes, such as heat waves, precipitation variation and increased urbanization, are projected to exacerbate global water scarcity 1-3 . By 2050, global and urban water use could surge by 80%, exacerbated by increased demand for energy and food, and the accompanying water pollution nexus. The two largest water consuming sectors are irrigation for agriculture (approximately 60%), and industry (approximately 25%) 2 ; the agricultural share varies from approximately 40% in developed countries, to 60-90% in developing countries 4,5 . By 2030, the UN Sustainable Development Goals propose universal access to safe and clean water (6.2.1, 6.4.1, 6.4.2) 6 . Meeting this goal relies on regional water-security, particularly in developing and emerging economies, such as China and India 7 , which contain the most populous megacities in the world 7,8 . In 2022, amongst the top-20 largest cities by population size, five are located in China, three in India, and ten in other emerging economies. For saving water in megacities like Mumbai, Cape Town or Amsterdam, large-scale water restrictions and economic shutdowns between 2018 and 2022 captured global attention 9,10 .

China consumes the largest amount of water in the world 11 . The country is comprised of 343 prefectures, i.e., prefectures, the term used for sub-provincial administrative units. China's water withdrawals for industrial and agricultural use have been at high and sustained levels over the last two decades: above 103 and 343 km 3 yr -1 by 2021, respectively 12 . Average share of agricultural irrigation occupies approximately 60%; industrial water withdrawals are ranked the first in 17% of prefectures, and the first-two places in 97% of prefectures among productive water withdrawals 13,14 . In an attempt to save water, the Chinese Government introduced water-saving ambition and redline regulations by 2030 under the Most Stringent Water Resources Management System 15 , and carbon-peaking commitment by 2030 and carbon-neutrality by 2060 for green development, meanwhile keeping GDP per capita to mid-level of developed countries by 2035. However, this is problematic in threefold, and there are no systematic and consistent comparisons of water efficiency indicators across all prefectures and economic sectors in China 16 . First, research is mainly limited to water use by the energy-related sectors and neglects many other water-consuming sectors, for example, water withdrawal inventories for construction of large coal-fired power generation hubs 17 ; subsector and systematic water withdrawal datasets are not publicly available 16,18 (here a sector denotes at the national level, 63 broad classifications, as is shown in Supplementary

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hal-05064895 , version 1 (13-05-2025)

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Zongyong Zhang, Yuli Shan, Martin R Tillotson, Philippe Ciais, Xu Zhao, et al.. Water-saving strategies across prefectures should target the manufacturing and agriculture sectors in China. Communications Earth & Environment, 2025, 6 (1), pp.349. ⟨10.1038/s43247-025-02292-3⟩. ⟨hal-05064895⟩
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