Utilization Characteristics and Sustainability Evaluation of Water Resources in China

Abstract

Water is an important factor of production contributing to all sectors and regions in the world. With the rapid development of the economy and the increase of population, the water crisis is becoming more and more serious, and will become an important obstacle to the sustainable development of society. It is particularly important to evaluate the sustainability of water resources utilization. Based on the analysis of the regional water resources utilization characteristics, this paper takes 31 provinces in mainland China as the research object and comprehensively evaluates the regional water resources’ sustainability from the aspects of hydrology, environment, economy and technology. The results show: From the regional perspective, the regionalization of China’s various indexes is obvious, the hydrological and environmental indexes in western regions are significantly higher than that in eastern regions; while the economic index in eastern regions is higher than that in western regions. From the time perspective, from 2010 to 2015, the sustainable development of water resources in seven provinces showed an increasing trend. Zhejiang changed from “Good” to “Excellent” and Hubei, Hunan, Guangxi, Sichuan, Guizhou and Xinjiang all had slight growth. There are six provinces which show varying degrees of decline, of which Liaoning changes from “Excellent” to “Medium”, Beijing, Hebei, Jilin, Guangdong, Hainan also had a slight decline; the rest of the provinces did not change, Qinghai and Chongqing have been maintained as “Excellent”. Taken together, the western regions of China have significant advantages in terms of quantity and quality of water resources, but its water use efficiency is low. However, the economic development in the eastern regions is rapid with high efficiency of water use, but there are some serious problems such as water resources insufficiency and river pollution.