Progress and water stress of sustainable development in Chinese northern drylands

Water stress is a major challenge present in drylands and it generally leads to an uneven progress in social, economic, and natural systems. However, its impact on the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs) in drylands remains unclear. By establishing a comprehensive assessment system incorporating SDGs progress evenness, this study has assessed water stress and its impact on sustainable development in Inner Mongolia, a typical and representative area of Eurasian drylands. Our results suggest that although Inner Mongolia has experienced rapid progress towards its SDGs, disregarding the evenness of SDGs progress overestimates the current situation and ignores regional gaps. Many poorly performing SDGs have made little progress over the past few decades, thus intensifying uneven progress goals. Further analyses have examined how water resources are associated with these problems. Moreover, multiple SDGs related to human essential needs and environmental conservation, including SDG 1 (no poverty), SDG 2 (zero hunger), SDG 3 (good health and well-being), SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy), and SDG 12 (responsible consumption and production), were significantly positively correlated with ecological water consumption, whereas SDGs related to economic growth, such as SDG 8 (decent work and economic growth), were positively correlated with industrial water consumption. These findings suggest that a conflict in water allocation for the achievement of different SDGs accounts for the uneven progress across the SDGs and therefore this impedes the sustainable development of these drylands. Therefore, we argue that industrial upgrading, regional planning, and management policies should be integrated into a single unified framework from an SDGs perspective to relieve water stress, thus promoting sustainable development in drylands.