Phosphorus footprint in China over the 1961–2050 period: historical perspective and future prospect

Jiang, Songyan; Hua, Hui; Sheng, Hu; Jarvie, Helen P.; Liu, Xin; Zhang, You; Yuan, Zengwei; Zhang, Ling; Liu, Xuewei. 2019 Phosphorus footprint in China over the 1961–2050 period: historical perspective and future prospect. Science of the Total Environment, 650 (1). 687-695. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.09.064

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Abstract/Summary

The phosphorus footprint (PF) is a novel concept to analyze human burdens on phosphorus resources. However, research on PF approach is still limited, and current several PF studies include incomplete phosphorus sources and have limited quantitative interpretation about the drivers of PF changes, which can help understand future trends of PF. This study develops a more comprehensive PF model by considering crop, livestock and aquatic food, and non-food goods, which covers the mainly phosphorus containing products consumed by human. The model is applied to quantify China's PF from 1961 to 2014, and the results of the model are also used to analyze the factors driving the PF changes and explored China's PF scenarios for 2050 using an econometric analysis model (STIRPAT). The result shows that China's PF increased over 11-fold, from 0.9 to 10.6 Tg between 1961 and 2014. The PF of livestock food dominated China's PF, accounting for 57% of the total in 1961 and 45% in 2014. The key factors driving the increase in China's PF are the increase in population and urbanization rate, with contributions of 38% and 33%, respectively. We showed that in the baseline scenario, China's PF would increase by 70% during 2014–2050 and cause the depletion of China's phosphate reserves in 2045. However, in the best case scenario, China's PF would decrease by 15% in 2050 compared with that in 2014, and it would have 50% of current phosphate reserve remaining by 2050. Several mitigation measures are then proposed by considering China's realities from both production and consumption perspective, which can provide valuable policy insights to other rapid developing countries to mitigate the P footprint.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.09.064
UKCEH and CEH Sections/Science Areas:	Water Resources (Science Area 2017-)
ISSN:	0048-9697
Additional Keywords:	phosphorus footprint, scenario analysis, driving factors, phosphorus demand, China
NORA Subject Terms:	Ecology and Environment
Date made live:	24 Sep 2018 13:36 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/521036

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