Assessing environmental, economic, and social impacts of inter-basin water transfer in China

Inter-basin water transfer (IBWT) has been widely implemented to address water deficit problems in many parts of the world. IBWT projects can pose various environmental, economic, and social impacts on both water recipient and source basins. This study presents an analysis of multi-dimensional impacts of China’s IBWT at the sub-basin scale, using three newly developed indicators. The analysis is based on China’s operating IBWT projects in 2016, which had a collective capacity of transferring ∼48 billion m3/yr water across sub-basins. Results indicate that IBWT helped improve environmental flow conditions in 20 out of 26 recipient sub-basins, with 6 out of 17 source sub-basins experiencing critical environmental flow conditions. IBWT generated net economic benefits of approximately 4.2 billion US dollars and net social benefits of providing domestic water use for 170 million people. IBWT posed overall positive environmental, economic, and social impacts, with the most benefits delivered to the North China Plain (i.e., the Huai and Hai River Basins). However, a few water source basins with relatively low local water availability were faced with a high risk of low environmental flows and high socio-economic costs, especially under low water resources conditions. Large spatial variations of IBWT impacts were found across sub-basins, which cannot be known by assessment at the major basin level. This highlights the need to assess IBWT impacts at finer spatial scales, considering regional differences in local water resources and social-economic development conditions. This study for the first time reveals multi-dimensional impacts of IBWT in China at the sub-basin scale. The results can be used by policymakers to inform water transfer and water management policies.