198 oriented policy shows positive impacts on water security for Vietnam’s long term development In the SC5 Energy Food Water scenario, Vietnam is likely to experience a significant increase in water[.]
198 oriented policy shows positive impacts on water security for Vietnam’s long-term development In the SC5 Energy Food Water scenario, Vietnam is likely to experience a significant increase in water demand from 1.3 billion m3 in 2014 to 3.6 billion m3 in 2030, which is similar to SC1, SC2, and SC3 This is equivalent to a growth rate at 6.9% during 2014– 2030 Compared with SC4, SC5 achieves an increase of 43.3% to 1.1 billion m3 With the energy–food–water nexus approach in SC5, the marginal water amount is expected to be optimized compared with a sectoral food- or energy-centric policy However, for sectors that consume water intensively, such as energy and food production, water demand inevitably increases in SC5, despite the modest water savings from the energy– food–water nexus policy approach In the SC6 Low Carbon scenario, water demand in SC6 would increase moderately from 1.3 billion m3 in 2014 to 3.4 billion m3 in 2030 over the next 16 years This is equivalent to an average annual growth rate at 15%, or 2.1 m3 per person While water demand of SC6 is moderately higher than SC4 (1.4 times or 0.9 billion m3), it is marginally lower than in the other scenarios, such as SC1, SC2, SC3, and SC5, which realise water demand of 0.27 billion m3, 0.35 billion m3, 0.26 billion m3, and 0.28 billion m3, respectively With the energy–food–water nexus approach and low carbon emissions in SC6, water consumption is forecast to be more efficient than in other scenarios, such as SC1, SC2, SC3, and SC5 Hence, SC6 would realise lower water demand than in the non-water oriented scenarios, and marginally higher water demand than in SC4 6.3.3 Water Stress Water stress occurs when the demand for water exceeds the available resource during a certain period of time or when poor quality water restricts its usage Therefore, in this research, water stress is defined as the ratio of total freshwater withdrawn to meet water demand and total water available In fact, water demand has one of the most significant impacts on water stress Therefore, the pressure on the water resource is a consequence of increasing water demand amid rapidly declining water availability due to the expansion of industrial, agricultural, and urbanization activities during 2014–2030 As shown in Figure 6-27, Vietnam’s water stress is likely to worsen significantly in the non-energy– food–water nexus scenarios, but to improve in the water-oriented and energy–food–water nexus scenarios