Enhancing capacity building to climate adaptation and water conservation among Chinese young people

Capacity development has been regarded as one of many measures to empower the abilities of nations to adapt to a changing climate. Promoting public engagement in water conservation, especially among young people since they will be leading decision making in the near future, is one effective strategy for adapting to the changing climate. This research presented a water footprint adaptation (WF) approach which attempted to link climate adaptation and capacity development with saving water strategy. The approach was tested in cooperation with two universities in Shaanxi province aiming to develop a starting point for WF evaluation and develop an improvement response. The results showed that the college students in our samples reduced their direct and indirect water footprints by 27.39% and 6.50%, respectively, in the post-intervention phase. The evaluation of the improvements proved that the WF approach to be efficient, the awareness of the college students on the matter could be increased. Additionally, the findings of the research indicated that the college students became change agent, expressing the desire to act as multipliers and to help the movement and spread of important knowledge about methods for alleviating water stress and about vulnerability to the changing climate. As expected, the awareness of water scarcity and perceptions of climate change had statistically significant effects on the water footprints, which was consistent with our hypothesis. Our approach helped participants develop capacity by revealing the linkage between their local level actions and the various aspects of adaptation to changing climate at the global level. This strategy will provide a comparative basis for water policy makers to adopt appropriate strategies to address matters related to water shortages and finally enhance sustainable adaptation to changing context.