Search

Climate change and human development have significantly altered the processes of natural water cycling, aggravating the challenge of worldwide water governance. China has initiated a new paradigm of water governance. However, the gap between concept and reality widened due to a lack of appropriate data and methodology. Current water management focuses on limiting the water withdrawals and improving the water use efficiency, and is not yet able to ensure the implementation of the new water governance paradigm. After a thorough study of the advanced development and achievement of water governance policies both at home and abroad, the conclusion has been reached that the total water consumption should be introduced as an additional management indicator to implement a dual control of water withdrawal and consumption. The paper proposes to: (1)Establish water consumption monitoring infrastructure with evapotranspiration remote sensing monitoring as its core component. (2) Implement the rigid water resources constraint by determining available water consumption targets of human activities in the basin, considering water requirements of environmental flow and ecosystem restoration, and establish a cascading system assigning targets to the sectors and/or stakeholders. (3) Implement the water consumption reduction schemes by limiting agricultural planting areas and optimizing ecosystem restoration with indigenous species. It is expected that the proposed approaches will effectively ensure the implementation of China′s new water resources governance paradigm with innovative data, methods, and measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]