Abstract:

The dry Tarim River Basin in Northwest China acts as a crucial ecotone for Xinjiang’s agricultural and grazing resources. Therefore, studying agricultural nonpoint source pollution is essential for the green and sustainable growth of basin agriculture. This research offers a gray water footprint theory-based assessment index for China’s sustainable development. Furthermore, the Tarim River Basin’s regional and temporal variation patterns are examined using SDGs framework. The agricultural gray water footprint’s intensity and efficiencies are estimated for 2006-2020. The findings are shown as below. (1) The Tarim River Basin’s entire agricultural gray water footprint has reduced, falling from 6.95×10¹⁰ m³ in 2006 (highest value) to 3.96×10¹⁰ m³ in 2017 (lowest value). The main source of the gray water footprint is animal husbandry. (2) In the Tarim River Basin, the intensity of the agricultural gray water footprint has decreased by 62.5% from 4.48×10⁴ m³·hm^-2 in 2006 to 1.68×10⁴ m³·hm^-2 in 2017. (3) The Tarim River Basin’s agricultural gray water footprint efficiency has increased from 0.6 yuan·m^-3 in 2006 to 4.03 yuan·m^-3 in 2019. To sum up, initiatives to improve the water environment in the Tarim River Basin should emphasize encouraging the integrated development of agriculture and animal husbandry in agricultural areas, modifying the livestock and poultry breeding structure and putting livestock and poultry manure recycling into practice.

Key words: agricultural grey water footprint, agricultural grey water footprint intensity, agricultural grey water footprint efficiency, sustainable development goal, Tarim River Basin