Exploring Absolute Sustainability - Informed Water Inequality Indicators of Chinese City Clusters.

Within a city cluster, central cities rely on imports of water-intensive products from hinterland cities to avoid exceeding domestic planetary boundaries (PB). Yet, the role of PB-informed virtual water trade in redistributing scarce freshwater resources among and within city clusters remains underexplored. This study addresses this gap by analysing city cluster-level PB-exceeded and PB-surplus water footprints of 313 Chinese cities. The water exceedance footprint measures the exceeded amount of water withdrawn against local water PBs to meet the demand of a city. The surplus water footprint quantifies the surplus water available within local PBs that can be sustainably utilised to meet the demand of a city. By employing a Chinese city cluster-level multi-regional input output model, we identified to what extent are city cluster demands for goods and services driving PB transgression. In 2017, Chinese city water exceedance footprint (WEF) amounts to 48.8 km3, while the surplus water footprint (SWF) is almost three times than WEF, reaching 136.7km3. Net WEF flows primarily from central to the non-central cities, while the net SWF flows in the opposite direction. This suggests central cities could shift from WEF exporters to SWF importers. Across the top five city clusters, net import flows of both PB-exceedance and surplus water are concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta. Contrary to prior research, city cluster-level virtual water trade is not strictly governed by geographical distance, nor do wealthier cities consistently show lower emission to value-added ratios compared to poorer ones. Our revised virtual water trade analysis advance knowledge on how city cluster consumption is transgressing water PBs.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  Environmental Research

• Publication date

  2025-07-29

• Fields of study

  Medicine, Economics, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.envres.2025.122478PMID 40744199
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Tracking grid-level freshwater boundary exceedance along global supply chains from consumption to impact

  2025cited by this paper
• A just world on a safe planet: a Lancet Planetary Health-Earth Commission report on Earth-system boundaries, translations, and transformations.

  2024cited by this paper
• Keeping the global consumption within the planetary boundaries

  2024cited by this paper
• Translating Earth system boundaries for cities and businesses

  2024cited by this paper
• City level water withdrawal and scarcity accounts of China

  2024cited by this paper
• Anthropogenic climate change has influenced global river flow seasonality

  2024cited by this paper
• Integrated assessment modelling and input-output analysis

  2024cited by this paper
• Telecoupling China's City-Level Water Withdrawal with Distant Consumption.

  2023cited by this paper
• Review of Quantitative Applications of the Concept of the Water Planetary Boundary at Different Spatial Scales

  2023cited by this paper
• Reducing global inequality to secure human wellbeing and climate safety: a modelling study.

  2023cited by this paper
• Ecologically unequal exchanges driven by EU consumption

  2023cited by this paper
• Living within the safe and just Earth system boundaries for blue water

  2023cited by this paper
• Integrated assessment models and input–output analysis: bridging fields for advancing sustainability scenarios research

  2023cited by this paper
• Revealing Trade Potential for Reversing Regional Freshwater Boundary Exceedance.

  2023cited by this paper
• Safe and just Earth system boundaries

  2023cited by this paper
• Rising agricultural water scarcity in China is driven by expansion of irrigated cropland in water scarce regions

  2022cited by this paper
• Degrowth scenarios for emissions neutrality

  2022cited by this paper
• Inequality can double the energy required to secure universal decent living

  2022cited by this paper
• How to stop cities and companies causing planetary harm

  2022cited by this paper
• Impacts of meeting minimum access on critical earth systems amidst the Great Inequality

  2022cited by this paper
• Herman E. Daly (1938–2022)

  2022cited by this paper
• Decomposing the impacts of climate change and human activities on runoff changes in the Yangtze River Basin: insights from regional differences and spatial correlations of multiple factors

  2022cited by this paper
• From Low- to Net-Zero Carbon Cities: The Next Global Agenda

  2021cited by this paper
• Transformation towards resilient sponge cities in China

  2021cited by this paper
• Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Global Cities Under SSP/RCP Scenarios, 1990 to 2100

  2021cited by this paper
• Urgent need for post-growth climate mitigation scenarios

  2021cited by this paper
• Entropy-based Chinese city-level MRIO table framework

  2021cited by this paper
• City footprints and SDGs provide untapped potential for assessing city sustainability

  2021cited by this paper
• Carbon analytics for net-zero emissions sustainable cities

  2021cited by this paper
• 1.5 °C degrowth scenarios suggest the need for new mitigation pathways

  2021cited by this paper
• Unraveling the effect of inter-basin water transfer on reducing water scarcity and its inequality in China.

  2021cited by this paper
• Clarifying Regional Water Scarcity in Agriculture based on the Theory of Blue, Green and Grey Water Footprints

  2021cited by this paper
• Global patterns of ecologically unequal exchange: Implications for sustainability in the 21st century

  2021cited by this paper
• Environmental Sustainability of Water Footprint in Mainland China

  2020cited by this paper
• South-to-North Water Diversion stabilizing Beijing’s groundwater levels

  2020cited by this paper
• Scientists’ warning on affluence

  2020cited by this paper
• City‐level water withdrawal in China: Accounting methodology and applications

  2020cited by this paper
• Exploring consumption-based planetary boundary indicators: An absolute water footprinting assessment of Chinese provinces and cities.

  2020cited by this paper
• Feeding ten billion people is possible within four terrestrial planetary boundaries

  2020cited by this paper
• Pollution exacerbates China’s water scarcity and its regional inequality

  2020cited by this paper
• Blue water footprint linked to national consumption and international trade is unsustainable

  2020cited by this paper
• Human domination of the global water cycle absent from depictions and perceptions

  2019cited by this paper
• Domino effect of climate change over two millennia in ancient China’s Hexi Corridor

  2019cited by this paper
• Mapping Carbon and Water Networks in the North China Urban Agglomeration

  2019cited by this paper
• Integrating the Water Planetary Boundary With Water Management From Local to Global Scales

  2019cited by this paper
• Energy requirements for decent living in India, Brazil and South Africa

  2019cited by this paper
• Human impacts on planetary boundaries amplified by Earth system interactions

  2019cited by this paper
• Contributions of sociometabolic research to sustainability science

  2019cited by this paper
• Can virtual water trade save water resources?

  2019cited by this paper
• Changing climate both increases and decreases European river floods

  2019cited by this paper
• Influential factors on water footprint: A focus on wheat production and consumption in virtual water import and export regions

  2019cited by this paper
• Explaining virtual water trade: A spatial-temporal analysis of the comparative advantage of land, labor and water in China.

  2019cited by this paper
• From Water-Use to Water-Scarcity Footprinting in Environmentally Extended Input-Output Analysis.

  2018cited by this paper
• Sustainability of the use of natural capital in a city: Measuring the size and depth of urban ecological and water footprints.

  2018cited by this paper
• The WULCA consensus characterization model for water scarcity footprints: assessing impacts of water consumption based on available water remaining (AWARE)

  2018cited by this paper
• High‐Resolution Water Footprints of Production of the United States

  2018cited by this paper
• “Sponge City” in China—A breakthrough of planning and flood risk management in the urban context

  2018cited by this paper
• The Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and their energy, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions implications: An overview

  2017cited by this paper
• Potentials and limitations of footprints for gauging environmental sustainability

  2017cited by this paper
• Water footprint of Jing-Jin-Ji urban agglomeration in China

  2017cited by this paper
• Global urbanization projections for the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways

  2017cited by this paper
• Analysis of emergy-based metabolic efficiency and environmental pressure on the local coupling and telecoupling between urbanization and the eco-environment in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration

  2017cited by this paper
• The roads ahead: Narratives for shared socioeconomic pathways describing world futures in the 21st century

  2017cited by this paper
• Water scarcity assessments in the past, present, and future

  2017cited by this paper
• Decent Living Standards: Material Prerequisites for Human Wellbeing

  2017cited by this paper
• On the decomposition of total impact multipliers in a supply and use framework

  2017cited by this paper
• Direct and indirect urban water footprints of the United States

  2017cited by this paper
• Groundwater depletion embedded in international food trade

  2017cited by this paper
• The Concept of City Carbon Maps: A Case Study of Melbourne, Australia

  2016cited by this paper
• Unequal Carbon Exchanges: The Environmental and Economic Impacts of Iconic U.S. Consumption Items

  2016cited by this paper
• Spatially explicit assessment of water embodied in European trade: A product-level multi-regional input-output analysis

  2016cited by this paper
• (Virtual) Water Flows Uphill toward Money.

  2016cited by this paper
• Comparing apples and oranges: Some confusion about using and interpreting physical trade matrices versus multi-regional input–output analysis

  2016cited by this paper
• Hybrid Analysis of Blue Water Consumption and Water Scarcity Implications at the Global, National, and Basin Levels in an Increasingly Globalized World.

  2016cited by this paper
• From Planetary Boundaries to national fair shares of the global safe operating space — How can the scales be bridged?

  2016cited by this paper
• Burden shifting of water quantity and quality stress from megacity Shanghai

  2016cited by this paper
• Planetary boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet

  2015cited by this paper
• Physical and virtual water transfers for regional water stress alleviation in China

  2015cited by this paper
• Water Footprint of Cities: A Review and Suggestions for Future Research

  2015cited by this paper
• Sustainability: Transfer project cannot meet China's water needs

  2015cited by this paper
• Balancing water resource conservation and food security in China

  2015cited by this paper
• A new scenario framework for climate change research: the concept of shared socioeconomic pathways

  2014cited by this paper
• Water on an Urban Planet: Urbanization and the Reach of Urban Water Infrastructure

  2014cited by this paper
• Virtual scarce water in China.

  2014cited by this paper
• A multi-regional input–output analysis of domestic virtual water trade and provincial water footprint in China

  2014cited by this paper
• International trade of scarce water

  2013cited by this paper
• Water conservancy projects in China: Achievements, challenges and way forward

  2013cited by this paper
• Does ecologically unequal exchange occur

  2013cited by this paper
• The representative concentration pathways: an overview

  2011cited by this paper
• Urban Water Resources Quota Management: The Core Strategy for Water Demand Management in China

  2010cited by this paper
• The impacts of climate change on water resources and agriculture in China

  2010cited by this paper
• A revised approach to water footprinting to make transparent the impacts of consumption and production on global freshwater scarcity

  2010cited by this paper
• A safe operating space for humanity

  2009cited by this paper
• Assessing the environmental impacts of freshwater consumption in LCA.

  2009cited by this paper
• Critical regions: A model-based estimation of world water resources sensitive to global changes

  2002cited by this paper

• No citing papers are available for this paper.