Research progress of water accounting

Water accounting is a prerequisite for the scientific management of water resources and the promotion of their sustainable development. With citespace6.2, this study collects 1,906 domestic and international literatures related to water accounting and conducts an analysis of the evolution of research hotspots and provides a comprehensive review of existing literature on water accounting from multiple dimensions, including research scope, objects, content, and methods, analyzing the current status and deficiencies. The results show that the research hotspots on domestic and international water accounting have gone through several stages of evolution, from qualitative to quantitative, evolving from the proposal of relevant theories and accounting models to the analysis of practical problems in water resource allocation, protection, sustainable development and so on; The scope of water accounting research covers macro levels such as global, transnational regions, national or domestic regions, meso levels such as industries, and micro levels such as enterprises, residents, government departments, or supply chains, of which there are relatively few research studies on global, third industry sectors, supply chains, and enterprises; The accounting objects include water resource assets, liabilities, and equity, with the concepts of water resource liabilities and equity still being controversial; The content of accounting includes the physical quantity and the value of water resources, with relatively insufficient consideration of water quality. There are already a variety of water accounting methods for different research objectives, but in practical applications, methods such as the fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method and the environmental replacement cost method still have shortcomings such as high data requirements and strong subjectivity. In light of the deficiencies in existing research, suggestions are made to strengthen academic exchanges in the field of transnational water resources, improve water resource data statistics, formulate normative guidance documents for water resource accounting, and comprehensively apply various water resource evaluation methods to further improve research on water resource accounting.