Table 2 Total costs and abatements of water quality 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 quality options

Costs ($ billion)

N reduced (kton)

Costs ($ billion)

N reduced (kton)

Costs ($ billion)

N reduced (kton)

Sources of nitrogen input to the river

Apply synthetic nitrogen fertilizer on land

0.25

118

0.25

206

0.25

213

Recycle manure as slurry on land

0.0002

9

0.0002

92

0.0002

144

Treat human waste with tertiary

technologies

0.00003

128

0.00003

140

0.00003

217

  1. The information on N reduced and costs is used for estimating the total amount of dissolved nitrogen 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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