Exploring China's water scarcity incorporating surface water quality and multiple existing solutions

Water scarcity has threatened the sustainability of human life, ecosystem evolution, and socio-economic development. However, previous studies have often lacked a comprehensive consideration of the impact of water quality and existing solutions, such as inter-basin water transfer and unconventional water resources, on water scarcity. In this paper, an improved approach was proposed to quantify water scarcity levels by comprehensively considering surface water quality and multiple solutions. China's water scarcity was first assessed at a high spatial resolution on a monthly basis over the 5-year period from 2014 to 2018. Then, the driving factors including water quality and solutions were identified by a geographic detector model. Finally, an in-depth investigation was conducted to unravel the effects of water quantity solutions (i.e., inter-basin water transfer and unconventional water use), and water quality solutions (i.e., improving surface water quality) on alleviating water scarcity. Based on monthly assessments considering water quality and multiple existing solutions, the results showed that over half of the national population (∼777 million) faced water scarcity for at least one month of the year. Agricultural water use and inadequate water quality were the main driving factors responsible for China's water scarcity. Over four-fifths of the national population (∼1.10 billion) could benefit from alleviated water scarcity through a combination of water quantity and quality solutions. However, the existing solutions considered were insufficient to completely resolve water scarcity in China, especially in Northern China, persisting as a challenging issue. The results obtained from this study provided a better understanding of China's water scarcity, which could contribute to guiding future efforts aimed at alleviating water scarcity and ensuring water security in China. •Water scarcity assessment incorporated water quality and multiple existing solutions.•China's water scarcity was assessed at a high spatial resolution on a monthly basis.•Over half of the national population faced water scarcity for at least one month of the year.•Agricultural water use and inadequate water quality were the main driving factors.•Over four-fifths of the national population could benefit from alleviated water scarcity by the combined water quantity and quality solutions.