Sinan Zhang’s scientific contributions

In the face of increasingly severe pressure on water resources, the theory of virtual water and virtual water trade provides feasible solutions for improving the efficiency of global water use for agricultural products and alleviating the pressure on water resources in water scarce countries or regions. Optimizing the domestic inter-regional trade of virtual water trade of agricultural products can provide information to help for the formulation of China’s water policy. In this study, we will establish scenarios from the two aspects of economy and water resources allocation and utilization, to study the impact of virtual water trade on water saving of agricultural products trade between regions in China. One scenario does not consider water conservation, only economic revenue - net social revenue maximization scenario. Another way to consider water saving is to maximize water saving. With the maximization of net social revenue, 9.6 billion m3 of virtual water had been exported to other regions in the severe drought regions, saving 18.6 billion m3 of water in China. The net social revenue is 9.1 billion RMB. In the scheme of water-saving maximization, virtual water is exported to water rich regions in severe, moderate and mild drought areas, and China had saved 21.5 billion m3 of water. China’s net social revenue is 4 billion RMB. The results show that the optimization of agriculture products domestic inter-regional trade can have a favorable impact on the allocation and utilization of water resources.

Faced with increasingly severe pressure on water resources, virtual water and virtual water trade theory provide a feasible solution to improve global water use efficiency for agricultural production and to alleviate the pressure on water resources in water-scarce countries or regions. The Yellow River, the second longest river in China, is facing increasing water scarcity. In this study we researched the crops international virtual water trade of 9 provinces and autonomous regions in Yellow River Basin in 2002 to 2010, to explore the effect on water resource of Yellow River Basin by crops international virtual water trade. The result shows that Yellow River Basin was the virtual water net import region in 2002 to 2010. Virtual water net import was increased from 7.5 billion tonnes to 52.4 billion tonnes from other countries in Yellow River Basin. Virtual water imports of Yellow River Basin relied mainly on the soybean import. Yellow River Basin exported virtual water by international trade of rice from 2002 to 2010. Yellow River Basin only exported virtual water by international trade of wheat in 2005 and imported virtual water in the other years. Also, Yellow River Basin imported virtual water by international trade of corn in 2002 to 2007 and exported virtual water in 2008 to 2010. The import and export of virtual water of rice, wheat and corn was very small compared to soybean. So crops international virtual water trade played a very important role in the water resources utilize of Yellow River Basin and will be increasingly important. This will to some extent alleviate the pressure of the water shortage in Yellow River Basin.

In 2017, China’s carbon emission trading market was officially launched. This paper summarizes the work of the seven carbon emission trading pilots and the implementation progresses of the key industries that participated in the program. This work serves as an important basis to support the establishment of the standard system of China’s carbon emission trading market.

In 2017, China’s carbon emission trading market was officially launched. This paper investigates on the needs of carbon emission standardization in key industrial fields such as chemical industry, building material industry and paper industry. To provide the standardized support for the stability, expansion and sustainable development of China’s carbon emission trading market, this paper proposes the direction of the standardization construction that is urgently needed by key industries in China’s carbon emission transaction.