Human Freshwater Demand for Economic Activity and Ecosystems in Taiwan |
| |
Authors: | Jiun-Jiun Ferng |
| |
Institution: | (1) Department of Real Estate and Built Environment, National Taipei University, 67, Sec. 3, Ming-Sheng East Road, Taipei, Taiwan, 10433, Republic of China |
| |
Abstract: | Freshwater is necessary to economic activity, and humans depend on goods and services generated by water-dependent ecosystems.
However, national freshwater management usually focuses on direct use of domestic freshwater. With an increasing scarcity
of freshwater, attention has turned to two indirect uses of freshwater by humans. The first indirect use is freshwater used
by foreign countries when producing products for export. The second use is freshwater required by local ecosystems: human
survival and development depend on goods and services generated in these ecosystems. This work adopted Taiwan as a case study.
In addition to two widely recognized ecosystem freshwater demands, evapotranspiration and reversed river flow, this study
suggests that freshwater is a constituent of some abiotic components, such as groundwater in aquifers, because excessive withdrawal
has already caused significant land subsidence in Taiwan. Moreover, the estimated results show that Taiwan’s net imports of
freshwater through trade amounts to approximately 25% of its total freshwater use for economic production. Integrating industrial
policy, trade policy, and national freshwater management is a useful approach for developing strategies to limit the growing
use of freshwater in Taiwan. Policy implications are then developed by further analyzing withdrawal sources of freshwater
(domestic and foreign) for supporting economic production in Taiwan and identifying the factors (domestic final demand and
export) driving freshwater-intensive products. |
| |
Keywords: | Economic activity Ecosystem services Freshwater demand Input-output analysis |
本文献已被 PubMed SpringerLink 等数据库收录! |
|