Table 1 Total costs and abatements of water quantity management options under different climate and socio-economic scenarios in 2050

From: Water quality management could halve future water scarcity cost-effectively in the Pearl River Basin

Management options

RCP2.6-SSP2

RCP8.5-SSP2

RCP8.5-SSP5

Sector

Water quantity options

Costs ($ billion)

Water saving (billion m3)

Costs ($ billion)

Water saving (billion m3)

Costs ($ billion)

Water saving (billion m3)

Agriculture

Low-pressure pipe irrigation

0.25

11

0.25

11

0.25

11

Households

Water-saving bathroom faucet

2

0.09

1

0.04

2

0.09

Water-saving kitchen faucet

2

0.43

2

0.43

2

0.42

Water saving showerhead

11

0.74

11

0.74

11

0.73

Water-saving washing machine

38

0.54

3

0.05

63

0.9

Water infrastructure improvement

Water storage

153

212

118

164

118

164

Water transport

3

56

1

17

1

14

  1. The information on water savings and costs are used for estimating total available water in the river and water scarcity with policy implementation in 2050, water scarcity abatement compared to the baseline scenario (2010), and cost-efficiency, contributing to the development of the MACC curve.
  2. RCP is short for Representative Concentration Pathway. SSP is short for Shared Socio-economic Pathway. Source: Results of the cost-optimization analysis (Supplementary Note 2; Supplementary Table 3).
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