Institute of Strategic Planning, Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning, Beijing 100043, China.
Yantai Consulting & Designing Institute of Environmental Engineering, Yantai 264000, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2023 Jan 30;20(3):2431. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20032431.
The United Nations and scholars called for more attention and efforts for cleaner water and water sustainability. This study established a water sustainability evaluating method framework, including indicators, goals, and methods and performs provincial and city-level assessments as case studies. The framework involves six fields, surface water quality, marine environmental quality, water-soil-agriculture, water infrastructure, water conservation, aquatic ecology, water-efficient use, and pollutant emission reduction. The methods innovatively integrate multi fields and concerns of water sustainability while providing a goal-oriented evaluation and implementing the United Nations' call for the refinement and clarification of SDGs. China's overall water sustainability was evaluated as 0.821 in 2021, and have performed well in surface water quality, sea quality, water conservation, and aquatic ecology fields while performing poorly in the water-soil-agriculture field. The overall strategy, policy, and action for water sustainability could be developed based on the evaluation. The water sustainability evaluation presented the regional and field/indicator differentiations. It is necessary to implement regionally classified policies and differentiated management for sustainable water development. The correlation analysis with socioeconomic factors implies the complicated and intimate interaction between socioeconomic development and water sustainability while revealing that development stages and the inherent conditions of natural ecology and water sources bring about the differentiations. A comprehensive evaluation of water sustainability may be three-dimensional, involving water quality and ecology, development related to water, and water resources and utilization.
联合国及学者呼吁加强对清洁水和水可持续性的关注和努力。本研究建立了水可持续性评价方法框架，包括指标、目标和方法，并进行了省级和市级评估作为案例研究。该框架涉及地表水质量、海洋环境质量、水土农业、水基础设施、水保护、水生生态、水高效利用和污染物减排等六个领域。该方法创新性地整合了多个领域和水可持续性关注点，提供了目标导向的评价，并实施了联合国对 SDGs 细化和澄清的呼吁。2021 年中国水可持续性总评为 0.821，在地表水质量、海水质量、水保护和水生生态领域表现良好，而在水土农业领域表现不佳。可根据评价制定水可持续性的总体战略、政策和行动。水可持续性评价呈现出区域和领域/指标的差异。有必要对可持续水发展实施区域分类政策和差异化管理。与社会经济因素的相关分析表明，社会经济发展与水可持续性之间存在复杂而密切的相互作用，同时也揭示了发展阶段和自然生态与水源固有条件带来的差异。水可持续性的综合评价可能是三维的，涉及水质和生态、与水相关的发展以及水资源利用。
