Interprovincial industrial virtual scarce water flow and water scarcity risk in China

• Northern provinces exported more scarce water than southern provinces, attributable to their poor water resource endowments and their role as agricultural and energy bases. • The production and consumption of ‘Agriculture & Fisheries’, ‘Food & Tobacco’, and ‘Construction’ dominate the interprovincial exchange of virtual scarce water. • Innovatively, the SPA model reveals the critical pathways of virtual scarce water flow, identifying ‘Agriculture & Fisheries’ as the source sector and ‘Food & Tobacco’ as the intermediate production sector. • Proposing the ratio of water scarcity footprint to water footprint, representing water scarcity risk at both provincial and sectoral levels to assess the impact of water scarcity on production and consumption. Potential water shortages driven by final demands have been previously documented. However, the sectoral flow pathways of virtual scarce water (VSW) and their impacts on production and consumption remain unclear. By employing multiregional Input-Output (MRIO) and Structural Path Analysis (SPA) models, we identified key VSW flow pathways between provinces and sectors, including source, sink, and intermediate production sectors. We introduced the water scarcity footprint (WSF) to water footprint (WF) ratio to quantify the exposure to potential water scarcity from both production and consumption. The results indicate that, despite similar water consumption, northern provinces with poorer water endowments exported more WSF than southern provinces, resulting in greater potential water shortages. This disparity is attributable to the arable land, coal, and oil reserves in northern provinces. Conversely, southern provinces consistently exhibited lower exposure to potential water scarcity, indicating limited impacts on their production and consumption. The sectors of “Agriculture & Fisheries”, “Food & Tobacco”, and “Construction” were predominant in VSW flows. “Agriculture & Fisheries” typically functioned as the source sector, whereas “Food & Tobacco” and “Construction” served as intermediate or terminal sectors. In southern provinces, the exposure of these three sectors to potential water scarcity was lower than that in northern provinces, suggesting limited impacts on production and consumption in these sectors.