sustainability Article Are China’s Water Resources for Agriculture Sustainable? Evidence from Hubei Province Hao Jin and Shuai Huang * School of Public Economics and Administration, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai 200433, China;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +86-21-65903686 Abstract: We assessed the sustainability of agricultural water resources in Hubei Province, a typical agricultural province in central China, for a decade (2008–2018). Since traditional evaluation models often consider only the distance between the evaluation point and the positive or negative ideal solution, we introduce gray correlation analysis and construct a new sustainability evaluation model. Our research results show that only one city had excellent sustainable development capacity of agricultural water resources, and the evaluation value of eight cities fluctuated by around 0.5 (the median of the evaluation result), while the sustainable development capacity of agricultural water resources in other cities was relatively poor. Our findings not only reflect the differences in the natural conditions of water resources among various cities in Hubei, but also the impact of the cities’ policies to ensure efficient agricultural water use for sustainable development. The indicators and methods Citation: Jin, H.; Huang, S. Are in this research are not difficult to obtain in most countries and regions of the world. Therefore, the China’s Water Resources for indicator system we have established by this research could be used to study the sustainability of Agriculture Sustainable? Evidence agricultural water resources in other countries, regions, or cities. from Hubei Province. Sustainability 2021, 13, 3510. https://doi.org/ Keywords: water resources; agricultural water resources; sustainability; gray correlation analysis; 10.3390/su13063510 evaluation model Academic Editors: Daniela Malcangio, Alan Cuthbertson, Juan 1.