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China's economic development has shifted from a high-speed growth stage to a high-quality development stage, which promotes the sustainable economic development of the Yangtze River (YR) and also improves the response capacity of the YR basin's resilience system to floods. Flood resilience (FR) is not only just the achievement of high-quality economic development (HQED) but also the key to mitigating flood damage (FD). Therefore, based on panel data from 2000 to 2019 from provincial administrative regions (PARs) in the Yangtze River basin (YRb), the entropy weight method and the quantitative regression analysis method were used to empirically investigate the impact of HQED and FR on FD in the YRb. The empirical analysis results show the following. (i) HQED has an inverted U-shaped effect on FD in the YRb, meaning that HQED will reach a certain point and reduce flood losses. (ii) The HQED model, which has been pushed forward, will significantly improve the level of FR. Various mediating effect test methods revealed that FR has a significant negative mediating effect on the process of HQED to mitigate FD. Taken together, this reveals the importance of insisting on implementing an HQED model to mitigate FD in the YRb, gradually deriving an FR that is adapted to floods and has a high self-organizing and self-restoring capacity through high-quality development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In ecologically fragile areas with arid climate, such as the Heihe River Basin in northwestern China, sustainable social and economic development depends largely on the availability and sustainable uses of water resource. However, there is more and more serious water resource shortage and decrease of water productivity in Heihe River Basin under the influence of climate change and human activities. This paper attempts to identify the severe water scarcity under climate change and presents possible solutions for sustainable development in Heihe River Basin. Three problems that intervened land use changes, water resource, the relevant policies and institutions in Heihe River basin were identified, including (1) water scarcity along with serious contradiction between water supply and demand, (2) irrational water consumption structure along with low efficiency, and (3) deficient systems and institutions of water resource management along with unreasonable water allocation scheme. In this sense, we focused on reviewing the state of knowledge, institutions, and successful practices to cope with water scarcity at a regional extent. Possible solutions for dealing with water scarcity are explored and presented from three perspectives: (1) scientific researches needed by scientists, (2) management and institution formulation needed by governments, and (3) water resource optimal allocation by the manager at all administrative levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]