Water Sustainability and High-Quality Economic Development

1. Introduction

Water resources are a fundamental pillar of both socioeconomic development [1,2,3] and environmental sustainability [4]. However, due to their limited availability and uneven distribution, coupled with the continuous expansion of the intensity and scope of human activities and the impacts of climate change [5,6,7], approximately 1.5 billion people worldwide are facing severe water scarcity [8,9]. Since the beginning of the Anthropocene, human activities have disrupted the dynamic balance of the natural water cycle, restricting its normal functioning. Balancing water sustainability and high-quality economic development within the carrying capacity of the water environment to achieve mutually reinforcing and synergistic development has become a top priority. This requires a global, systematic, and interdisciplinary vision to address the many challenges facing water resources [10,11], to ensure the continuous prosperity of the social economy, and to safeguard the sound development of the environment.

Accordingly, this Special Issue serves as a key platform, presenting cutting-edge research that merges theoretical innovation with practical solutions. The editorial team has carefully selected diverse contributions that reflect the multifaceted nature of modern water resource management. These include in-depth analyses of conflict resolution in transboundary water management, advanced efficiency evaluation models using data analytics and machine learning, ecological optimization studies on balancing human water use with ecosystem health, and technological innovations in smart water monitoring and AI-driven flood and drought prediction. Together, these interdisciplinary studies offer a comprehensive view of sustainable water governance, bridging academia, policy-making, and practical implementation. The following overview highlights the key findings and methodologies of these studies, emphasizing their potential to transform real-world water challenges into opportunities for resilient development.

2. An Overview of the Contributions to this Special Issue

To address cross-basin water pollution conflicts involving heterogeneous sanctions, Contribution 1 employs an improved Graph Model for Conflict Resolution (GMCR), integrating case studies and evolutionary analysis to conduct a systematic modeling and strategic analysis of the cross-border water pollution dispute in Hongze Lake, China, in 2018. The study finds that the heterogeneity of sanctioning opponents affects the equilibrium outcomes of conflicts and even alters the evolution of conflict situations. Moreover, the newly developed method can accurately predict conflict equilibria, providing strategic insights for the governance of cross-basin water pollution.

To balance the interest-based conflicts over flood control and drainage between upstream and downstream regions and to achieve collaborative management, Contribution 2 conducts a comparative analysis of interest relationships in the Yangtze River Delta Ecological and Green Integration Development Demonstration Zone by applying evolutionary game theory and introducing external driving factors as well as internal balancing mechanisms. The study finds that the selection of a collaborative strategy is closely related to factors such as conflict costs and compensation amounts. A reasonable reward–punishment mechanism can drive the model to evolve toward stable strategies, and internal/external mechanisms, respectively, facilitate regional cooperation by compensating for economic losses and coordinating contradictions.

To improve the efficiency of water resources in China, Contribution 3 employs the Super-Efficiency Slacks-Based Measure (SE-SBM) model and a Tobit regression model to measure water resource use efficiency (WRUE) and analyzes its driving factors in China from 2005 to 2021. The study finds that Jilin has the highest agricultural WRUE (1.185) and Ningxia the lowest (0.687); in the industrial sector, Beijing has the highest WRUE (1.399) and Jiangxi the lowest (0.212). Factors such as economic structure and water resource endowment significantly influence WRUE, necessitating precautions against inefficiencies caused by the declining proportion of the industrial sector in the economic structure.

To explore the impact of the water resources tax reform on enterprises’ green innovation and total factor productivity, Contribution 4 takes the high water-consuming A-share listed companies in China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets from 2007 to 2021 as samples and conducts an empirical study by using the Difference-in-Differences (DID) method. The study finds that replacing water resources fees with taxes significantly improves enterprises’ green innovation level and total factor productivity. Green innovation plays a partial mediating role in this process; that is, water resources tax reform promotes total factor productivity by driving enterprises’ green innovation. From the perspective of enterprise property rights, the economic effect of the reform is more obvious in non-state-owned enterprises than in state-owned enterprises, providing empirical evidence for expanding the pilot scope of the water resources tax reform.

To address the issue of neglecting ecological benefits in reservoir water resource allocation and achieve coordination between ecology and water supply, Contribution 5 constructs an integrated multi-objective model based on the assessment of ecosystem service value-based supply and demand. By combining a forecasting model to set different scenarios, it conducts a case study on water allocation plans for Datun Reservoir, a key hub of the East Route of China’s South-to-North Water Diversion Project. The study finds that optimizing water supply for domestic/industrial use and reservoir storage can enhance the overall ecosystem service value of Datun Reservoir by 5.15% to 11.36%. In scenarios of high economic growth, there is potential for synergy between water supply and ecosystem service value, while during economic downturns, a trade-off between ecological services and water supply capacity may emerge and could be maintained at a lower level.

To reveal the relationship between water resources and economic development from the perspective of ecosystem services, Contribution 6 selects the river ecosystem service values and comprehensive economic indices of the Yellow River Basin from 2007 to 2018, and uses a coupling coordination model to carry out a synergy assessment. The study finds that the overall ecosystem service values in the Yellow River Basin show an upward trend, with the highest values in the lower reaches and a gradual decrease from the middle to upper reaches. The synergy is mainly reflected in the supply and regulation functions, while the synergy of cultural functions needs to be improved. The overall degree of coupling coordination has increased, but the long-standing problem of lagging ecological development remains.

To achieve the decoupling of agricultural economic growth from water pollution, Contribution 7 combines the water footprint theory, Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) model, and Tapio Decoupling Model (TDM) to conduct a decoupling analysis of the agricultural gray water footprint (AGWF) and economic growth of the Yellow River Basin (YRB) from 2016 to 2021. The study finds that the overall AGWF in the YRB first decreases and then slowly increases, dropping by 5.39% in 2021 compared with 2016. The decoupling status of AGWF and agricultural GDP evolves from “strong decoupling” to “weak decoupling”, and the decoupling status of population and agricultural GDP remains in the “strong decoupling” category continuously.

To deeply explore the socioeconomic impacts of water-sensitive urban design (WSUD) and promote sustainable urban planning, Contribution 8 employs a review analysis method, focusing on the impacts of WSUD on community well-being, property values, infrastructure costs, and public participation, while discussing the roles of citizen perception, equity, and financing mechanisms. The study finds that WSUD requires the integration of socioeconomic factors, and that long-term sustainability can be ensured through interdisciplinary approaches and policy reforms to build resilient and equitable urban communities.

To address the challenges of water scarcity and desalination technologies in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, Contribution 9 focuses on Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and employs a bibliometric approach to conduct a correlational study on water scarcity, energy, and desalination technologies, integrating solar photovoltaic/thermal technologies with traditional desalination processes, such as the multi-effect distillation (MED) and multi-stage flash (MSF) approaches. The study finds that solar powered desalination technologies can mitigate high energy consumption issues. Despite challenges like high investment costs and technical complexities, the integration of renewable energy and desalination presents opportunities for GCC countries, necessitating interdisciplinary collaboration to achieve water security and economic development.

To reveal the direct impact of water resources on corporate finance and analyze the water risks from the perspective of capital cost, Contribution 10 takes Chinese A-share listed companies from 2019 to 2023 as samples and uses regression model to examine the relationship between water vulnerability and capital cost, as well as the moderating effects of water regulation and water investment. The study finds that water vulnerability positively affects capital cost by exacerbating financing constraints. Water regulation has a positive moderating effect, while water investment has a negative moderating effect. Additionally, the positive relationship between water vulnerability and capital cost exhibits heterogeneity at both industry and firm levels, whereas the moderating effect of government water governance only shows industry-level heterogeneity.

3. Conclusions

This Special Issue focuses on interdisciplinary research at the intersection of water sustainability and high-quality economic development. By integrating methodologies such as game theory, ecological value quantification, and techno-economic assessment, it presents multi-disciplinary findings in conflict resolution for transboundary water management, water resource efficiency evaluation, and ecological optimization model construction, providing theoretical and practical solutions for balancing the feedback relationship between water and economic systems.

The team of Guest Editors expects that the outcomes of this Special Issue will serve as reference for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners, facilitating the identification of cutting-edge research directions. The proposed conflict analysis models, ecological service quantification methods, and technological innovation pathways hold significant value for analyzing the synergistic mechanisms of water–economy systems and optimizing regional water management policies.

Based on existing research, future studies may focus on three key research fields: constructing resilience in water–economy systems under climate change, innovating smart water management driven by digital technologies, and designing collaborative mechanisms for global water governance, so as to promote the deep integration of sustainable water use and economic prosperity.