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Summary China faces the challenge of balancing unprecedented economic growth and environmental sustainability. Rather than a homogenous country that can be analyzed at the national level, China is a vast country with significant regional differences in physical geography, regional economy, demographics, industry structure, and household consumption patterns. There are pronounced differences between the much‐developed Eastern‐Coastal economic zone and the less developed Central and Western economic zones in China. Such variations lead to large regional discrepancies in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Using the 28 regional input‐output tables of China for 2002 and 2007 and structural decomposition analysis (SDA), we analyze how changes in population, technology, economic structure, urbanization, and household consumption patterns drive regional CO2 emissions. The results show a significant gap between the three economic zones in terms of CO2 emission intensity, as the Eastern‐Coastal zone possesses more advanced production technologies compared to the Central and Western zones. The most polluting sectors and largest companies are state‐owned enterprises and thus are potentially able to speed up knowledge transfer between companies and regions. The “greening” of the more developed areas is not only a result of superior technology, but also of externalizing production and pollution to the poorer regions in China. The results also show that urbanization and associated income and lifestyle changes were important driving forces for the growth of CO2 emissions in most regions in China. Therefore, focusing on technology and efficiency alone is not sufficient to curb regional CO2 emissions.

13Between 2000 and 2010, China's electricity production had increased threefold and accounted 14 for 50% of domestic and 12% of global CO 2 emissions in 2010. Substantial changes in the 15 electricity fuel mix are urgently required to meet China's carbon intensity target of reducing CO 2 16 emissions by 40% -45% by 2020. Moreover, electricity production is the second largest 17 consumer of water in China, but water requirements vary significantly between different 18 electricity generation technologies. By integrating process-based life-cycle analysis (LCA) and 19 2 input-output analysis (IOA) and through tracking national supply chains, we have provided a 20 detailed account of total life-cycle carbon emissions (in g/kWh) and water consumption (in 21 liter/kWh) for eight electricity generation technologies -(pulverized) coal, gas, oil, hydro, 22 nuclear, wind, solar photovoltaic, and biomass. We have demonstrated that a shift to low carbon 23 renewable electricity generation technologies, i.e. wind, could potentially save more than 79% 24 of total life-cycle CO 2 emissions and more than 50% water consumption per kWh electricity 25 generation. Not only a reduction of coal use in China's electricity fuel mix canhelp mitigate 26 climate change, but it also alleviates water stress.

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Abstract:The Water Footprint, as an indicator of water consumption has become increasingly popular for analyzing environmental issues associated with the use of water resources in the global supply chain of consumer goods. This is particularly relevant for countries like the UK, which increasingly rely on products produced elsewhere in the world and thus impose pressures on foreign water resources. Existing studies calculating water footprints are mostly based on process analysis, and results are mainly available at the national level. The current paper assesses the domestic and foreign water requirements OPEN ACCESSWater 2011, 3 48 for UK final consumption by applying an environmentally extended multi-regional input-output model in combination with geo-demographic consumer segmentation data. This approach allows us to calculate water footprints (both direct and indirect) for different products as well as different geographies within the UK. We distinguished between production and consumption footprints where the former is the total water consumed from the UK domestic water resources by the production activities in the UK and the latter is the total water consumed from both domestic and global water resources to satisfy the UK domestic final consumption. The results show that the production water footprint is 439 m 3 /cap/year, 85% of which is for the final consumption in the UK itself. The average consumption water footprint of the UK is more than three times bigger than the UK production water footprint in 2006. About half of the UK consumption water footprints were associated with imports from Non-OECD countries (many of which are waterscarce), while around 19% were from EU-OECD countries, and only 3% from Non-EU-OECD countries. We find that the water footprint differs considerably across sub-national geographies in the UK, and the differences are as big as 273 m 3 /cap/year for the internal water footprint and 802 m 3 /cap/year for the external water footprint. Our results suggest that this is mainly explained by differences in the average income level across the UK. We argue that the information provided by our model at different spatial scales can be very useful for informing integrated water supply and demand side management.

It is important to evaluate the effectiveness of permeable pavements on flood mitigation at different spatial scales for their effective application, for example, sponge city construction in China. This study evaluated the effectiveness of three types of permeable pavements (i.e., permeable asphalts (PA), permeable concretes (PC), and permeable interlocking concrete pavers (PICP)) on flood mitigation at a community scale in China using a hydrological model. In addition, the effects of clogging and initial water content in permeable pavements on flood mitigation performance were assessed. The results indicated that in 12 scenarios, permeable pavements reduced total surface runoff by 1-40% and peak flow by 7-43%, respectively. The hydrological performance of permeable pavements was limited by clogging and initial water content. Clogging resulted in the effectiveness on total surface runoff reduction and peak flow reduction being decreased by 62-92% and 37-65%, respectively. By increasing initial water content at the beginning of the simulation, the effectiveness of total runoff reduction and peak flow reduction decreased by 57-85% and 37-67%, respectively. Overall, among the three types of permeable pavements, PC without clogging had the best performance in terms of flood mitigation, and PICP was the least prone to being clogged. Our findings demonstrate that both the type and the maintenance of permeable pavements have significant effects on their performance in the flood mitigation. national scale, with the innovation of finding ecologically suitable alternatives to mitigate the impacts of water-related problems resulting from "too much water" or floods, "too little water" or water scarcity, and "too dirty water" or water pollution [8,9]. One of the core objectives of the construction of sponge cities is to control and mitigate the increasing challenges of urban flooding/waterlogging [10]. The Central Government of China has provided financial support to implement the sponge city plan in 30 pilot cities around China [9][10][11]. However, the sponge city concept is still a relatively new idea and it requires more research on urban hydrologic theory and different engineering approaches in many cities in China.Permeable pavement is one such technology in sponge city construction that is highly recommended by the Chinese Ministry of Housing and Urban Rural Development (MHURD) [12]. This technology has been studied and implemented in many areas in the world to manage urban stormwater under different plans with terminologies such as sustainable urban drainage systems, low impact development, best management practices, and others [13][14][15]. Reductions in storm runoff peak, runoff volume and improvement in water quality by permeable pavement systems have been widely reported [16][17][18][19]. For example, Pyke et al. [16] reported that stormwater runoff was more sensitive to changes in impervious covers than changes in precipitation volume and intensity. Damodaram et al. [19] demonstrated that permeable pavements had...

Abstract. This paper develops a systematic hazard interaction classification based on the geophysical environment that natural hazards arise from -the hazard-forming environment. According to their contribution to natural hazards, geophysical environmental factors in the hazard-forming environment were categorized into two types. The first are relatively stable factors which construct the precondition for the occurrence of natural hazards, whilst the second are trigger factors, which determine the frequency and magnitude of hazards. Different combinations of geophysical environmental factors induce different hazards. Based on these geophysical environmental factors for some major hazards, the stable factors are used to identify which kinds of natural hazards influence a given area, and trigger factors are used to classify the relationships between these hazards into four types: independent, mutex, parallel and series relationships. This classification helps to ensure all possible hazard interactions among different hazards are considered in multi-hazard risk assessment. This can effectively fill the gap in current multihazard risk assessment methods which to date only consider domino effects. In addition, based on this classification, the probability and magnitude of multiple interacting natural hazards occurring together can be calculated. Hence, the developed hazard interaction classification provides a useful tool to facilitate improved multi-hazard risk assessment.

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