Clarifying the subject of risk bearing and sharing proportion of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) project in operational water conservancy scenic spots is fundamental to attracting social capital, fostering government-enterprise collaboration, and ensuring the healthy and sustainable development of such projects. Using the WSR methodology, this paper identifies 23 risks in PPP projects for operational water conservancy scenic spots based on the three dimensions of Wuli, Shili, and Renli. It establishes risk sharing principles and clarifies the responsible entities for each risk. For risks to be jointly borne by the government and enterprises, a stochastic cooperative game model is constructed, and the AHP-Shapley value method is used to calculate the Shapley value for risk sharing. A proportional risk sharing model between the government and enterprises for jointly borne risks in such projects is established. The feasibility of the model is verified using a case study of a PPP project in an operational water conservancy scenic spot in Jiangsu Province. The results indicate that risks and their responsible entities in PPP projects for operational water conservancy scenic spots can be systematically identified based on the dimensions of Wuli, Shili, and Renli, and the proportion of risks that should be shared between the government and enterprises is determined using the AHP-Shapley value method.

Water conservancy scenic spots have multiple functions, and play an important role in maintaining the safety of water conservancy projects, conserving water sources, protecting ecology, improving the living environment, expanding the business scope of water management units, and even stimulating regional economic and cultural development. Based on the grounded theory, six scenic spots, such as Tanglai Sluice Water Conservancy Scenic Spot, Mingcui Lake Water Conservancy Scenic Spot, and Sand Lake Water Conservancy Scenic Spot, were selected as samples. By integrating questionnaire survey and interview survey, an analysis was conducted on the development status and existing problems of typical water conservancy scenic spots in the upper reaches of the Yellow River from four aspects: scenic spot management, ecological protection, water culture development, and comprehensive benefits. Combined with theories such as human resource management theory and industrial chain theory, this paper proposed corresponding improvement strategies. Results show that sample scenic spots in the upper reaches of the Yellow River generally face problems such as an imbalanced professional structure of personnel and weak publicity. The development of public welfare-oriented scenic spots still faces problems such as insufficient management personnel and a lack of special funding support for operation. The development of operation-oriented scenic spots presents difficulties such as a lack of special funds for public welfare maintenance, serious personnel turnover, insufficient water culture construction, and short industrial chains. The proposed countermeasures include strengthening the development of management and operational personnel, improving investment and financing mechanisms for management and operations, enhancing the publicity and promotion of water conservancy scenic areas, diversifying water culture initiatives, and expanding the industrial chain of water conservancy scenic areas through multiple approaches.

Based on the perspective of “ water-energy” nexus, the cause-and-effect flow diagram was constructed with Vensim PLE software to analyze the correlation between water resources and energy resources in Northwest China. Scenarios of conventional development, scenario of in-depth implementation of water-saving and energy-saving policies, scenario of technological improvement of water-saving and energy-saving and scenario of improvement of energy industrial structure were set. The system dynamics model is used to simulate and compare the development trends of four indicators, GDP, water consumption per unit of energy production, energy consumption per 10000 yuan of GDP and energy scarcity level in 2022-2030 under different scenarios. The conclusions are as follows: based on the current development trends of the five northwestern provinces and regions, the economic level will continue to improve, and the water consumption per unit of energy production, energy consumption per 10000 yuan of GDP, and energy scarcity level will continue to decline. Compared with the conventional development scenario, in the other scenarios, the GDP and water use efficiency of energy production in Northwest China will increase more, and the energy consumption intensity and energy scarcity level will decrease more. Among various scenarios, the implementation of water-saving and energy-saving policies has the most significant improvement effect on energy scarcity level and energy consumption per 10000 yuan of GDP, while technological improvement of water-saving and energy-saving has the most significant inhibitory effect on the water consumption per unit of energy production. The improvement of the energy industry structure can also balance the constraint effect on the water consumption per unit of energy production, energy consumption per 10000 yuan of GDP, and energy scarcity level. Finally, a development path for the energy industry is proposed, with the deepening implementation of water-saving and energy-saving policies, technological improvement of water-saving and energy-saving, and upgrading of the energy industry structure, so as to promote the sustainable development of the energy industry in Northwest China.