Measuring benefits of rural-to-urban water transfer:a case study from Puyang River basin,China

Agriculture-to-urban water transfer is currently an important measure to meet the increasing water demand resulting from rapid industrialization and urbanization in China.Measuring benefits of agriculture-to-urban water transfer is critical to assess water transfer proposals,and it can also provide reliable basis for redistributing the benefits of agriculture-to-urban water transfer.This paper has developed a comprehensive framework in which production function approach is applied to quantify the value of water use in agricultural and industrial sectors,and contingent valuation method is employed to investigate the value of water use in municipal consumption and ecological environment.A case study from Zhuji City in China verified the feasibility and validity of the method proposed in the paper.Results indicate that the agriculture-to-urban water transfer increases the water value created by improving allocation efficiency of water use in different sectors.The benefits of agriculture-to-urban water transfer mainly originate from the fact that the economic value in industrial water use is higher than in the other sectors’water use.Meanwhile,the urban residents have a stronger desire to improve the water eco-environment which leads to higher water value in urban area.