Water consumption and biodiversity: Responses to global emergency events

作者：Dandan Zhao, Junguo Liu, Laixiang Sun, Klaus Hubacek, Stephan Pfister, Kuishuang Feng, Heran Zheng, Peng Xu, Daoping Wang, Hong Yang, Lei Shen, Fei Lun, Xu Zhao, Bin Chen, Marko Keskinen, Shaohui Zhang, Jialiang Cai, Olli Varis · 发表于：中国科学通报：英文版 · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1016/j.scib.2024.03.049 · 被引用次数：15 · 研究领域：Water-Energy-Food Nexus Studies、COVID-19 impact on air quality、Environmental Impact and Sustainability

Given that it was a once-in-a-century emergency event, the confinement measures related to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused diverse disruptions and changes in life and work patterns. These changes significantly affected water consumption both during and after the pandemic, with direct and indirect consequences on biodiversity. However, there has been a lack of holistic evaluation of these responses. Here, we propose a novel framework to study the impacts of this unique global emergency event by embedding an environmentally extended supply-constrained global multi-regional input-output model (MRIO) into the drivers-pressure-state-impact-response (DPSIR) framework. This framework allowed us to develop scenarios related to COVID-19 confinement measures to quantify country-sector-specific changes in freshwater consumption and the associated changes in biodiversity for the period of 2020-2025. The results suggest progressively diminishing impacts due to the implementation of COVID-19 vaccines and the socio-economic system's self-adjustment to the new normal. In 2020, the confinement measures were estimated to decrease global water consumption by about 5.7% on average across all scenarios when compared with the baseline level with no confinement measures. Further, such a decrease is estimated to lead to a reduction of around 5% in the related pressure on biodiversity. Given the interdependencies and interactions across global supply chains, even those countri...