Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.
Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Illinois, Chicago, IL, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2022 May 13;17(5):e0266554. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0266554. eCollection 2022.
Analysis of global sustainability is incomplete without an examination of the FEW nexus. Here, we modify the Generalized Global Sustainability Model (GGSM) to incorporate the global water system and project water stress on the global and regional levels. Five key water-consuming sectors considered here are agricultural, municipal, energy, industry, and livestock. The regions are created based on the continents, namely, Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, and South America. The sectoral water use intensities and geographical distribution of the water demand were parameterized using historical data. A more realistic and novel indicator is proposed to assess the water situation: net water stress. It considers the water whose utility can be harvested, within economic and technological considerations, rather than the total renewable water resources. Simulation results indicate that overall global water availability is adequate to support the rising water demand in the next century. However, regional heterogeneity of water availability leads to high water stress in Africa. Africa's maximum net water stress is 140%, so the water demand is expected to be more than total exploitable water resources. Africa might soon cross the 100% threshold/breakeven in 2022. For a population explosion scenario, the intensity of the water crisis for Africa and Asia is expected to rise further, and the maximum net water stress would reach 149% and 97%, respectively. The water use efficiency improvement for the agricultural sector, which reduces the water demand by 30%, could help to delay this crisis significantly.
如果不考察粮食-能源-水(FEW)关系，对全球可持续性的分析就是不完整的。在这里，我们修改了广义全球可持续性模型（GGSM），纳入了全球水系统，并在全球和区域层面上预测水压力。这里考虑了五个主要耗水部门，分别是农业、市政、能源、工业和畜牧业。这些区域是根据各大洲创建的，分别是非洲、亚洲、欧洲、北美洲、大洋洲和南美洲。部门用水强度和水需求的地理分布使用历史数据进行参数化。我们提出了一个更现实和新颖的指标来评估水状况：净水压力。它考虑了在经济和技术考虑范围内可以收获的水，而不是总可再生水资源。模拟结果表明，全球水资源总体上足以支持下个世纪不断增长的用水需求。然而，水资源供应的区域差异导致非洲的水压力很高。非洲的最大净水压力为 140%，因此预计水需求将超过可利用水资源总量。非洲可能很快会在 2022 年达到 100%的阈值/收支平衡。对于人口爆炸情景，预计非洲和亚洲的水危机强度将进一步上升，最大净水压力将分别达到 149%和 97%。提高农业部门的用水效率（可减少 30%的水需求），有助于显著延缓这场危机。
