Groundwater is one of the most critical elements of global water resources. However, growing water consumption has resulted in rapid depletion of groundwater, which threaten the sustainable development of economy and environment worldwide. Groundwater footprint (GF) is the area of region capable of achieving the sustainable use of groundwater and healthy ecosystem simultaneously. However, existing studies for GF assessment fail to distinguish the difference between sub-systems at spatial and temporal scales. Moreover, the big error (>40%) always existed due to the coarse spatial resolution. Thus, the North China Plain (NCP), the world's largest groundwater depression cone, was selected as the first demonstration to perform GF assessment at subsystem level. Disparate groundwater subsystems in NCP show notable differences in terms of unsustainable levels. The NCP's average shallow and deep GF is 90.93 and 65.12 million km2 with the groundwater utilization intensity is 6.56. The variation of groundwater utilization intensity under different scenarios were analyzed. Combining all agricultural management could reduce groundwater utilization intensity by around 74.58% to 96.95%, resulting that groundwater could recover to the original health level nearly. It suggested that government should implement strict and holistic management policies to better access exploit and utilize groundwater, such as exploring alternative sources and adjusting the water use structure to achieve sustainable management of groundwater.
Abstract Rescuing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from failing requires understanding their interactions networks, i.e., synergies and trade-offs, at national and especially sub-national levels, where SDGs were delivered. This understanding will help itendifying the key hurdles and opportunities to prioritize the 17 SDGs in a indivisible manner for a country. However, current research on SDG priorities at sub-national levels remains limited mainly due to difficulty in data collection. Here, we collect a unified annual dataset of 102 indicators covering national and 31 provinces in China over 2000–2020. We analyze the importance of the 17 SDGs at national, provincial and regional levels through synergy and trade-off networks. The key SDGs in trade-off (provincial: 12/31, regional: 1/6) differ more than synergy (provincial: 7/31, regional: 0). Nevertheless, combating climate change (SDG13) and improving gender equality (SDG5) are overall key hurdles for China to achieving 2030 agenda. Focusing on poverty eradication (SDG1) and increasing clean water and sanitation (SDG6) have highly compound positive effect. Our findings provide essential knowledge and insight on adopting common but diffrentiaetd SDGs priorities and balance mattering China’s sustainable development.
With the development of economic globalization, some local environmental pollution has become a global environmental problem through international trade and transnational investment. This paper selects the annual data of 30 provinces in China from 2000 to 2017 and adopts exploratory spatial data analysis methods to explore the spatial agglomeration characteristics of haze pollution in China’s provinces. Furthermore, this paper constructs a spatial econometric model to test the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) and industrial structure transformation on haze pollution. The research results show that the high-high concentration area of haze pollution in China has shifted from the central and western regions to the eastern region and from inland regions to coastal regions. When FDI increases by 1%, haze pollution in local and neighboring areas will be reduced by 0.066% and 0.3538%, respectively. However, the impact of FDI on haze pollution is heterogeneous in different stages of economic development. FDI can improve the rationalization level of industrial structure, and then inhibit the haze pollution. However, FDI inhibits the upgrading level of industrial structure to a certain extent, and then aggravates the haze pollution. The research in this paper provides an important decision-making basis for coordinating the relationship between FDI and environmental pollution and realizing green development.
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