Is there a relationship between water scarcity and water use efficiency in China? A national decadal assessment across spatial scales

Zhou

et al. 2018

Water

Abstract:Water resources are important and irreplaceable natural and economic resources. Achieving a balance between economic prosperity and protection of water resource environments is a major issue in China. This article develops a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach with undesirable outputs by using Seiford's linear converting method to estimate water use efficiencies for 30 provinces in China, from 2008-2016,and then analyzes the influencing factors while using a DEA-Tobit model. The findings show that the overall water use efficiency of the measured Chinese provinces, when considering sewage emissions as the undesirable output, is 0.582. Thus, most regions still need improvement. Provinces with the highest water efficiency are located in economically developed Eastern China. The spatial pattern of water use efficiency in China is consistent with the general pattern of regional economic development. This study implies that factors like export dependence, technical progress, and educational value have a positive influence on water use efficiency. Further, while industrial structure has had a negative impact, government intervention has had little impact on water use efficiency. These research results will provide a scientific basis for the government to make plans for water resource development, and it may be helpful in improving regional sustainable development.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water Use Efficiency and Its Influencing Factors in China: Based on the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA)—Tobit Model

Zhou

et al. 2018

Water

“…For the second issue, many studies have focused on industrial structure, economic development, technical progress, and expansion policies to determine the key factors that influence industrial water consumption [6,9,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. However, most of these factors are affected by the rapid urbanization; thus, urbanization is the main factor that has influenced the efficiency of industrial water consumption in China.…”

Section: Of 17mentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Urbanization Improve Industrial Water Consumption Efficiency?

Liu

Hou

et al. 2019

Sustainability

Although some studies have focused on the logical connection between industrial water consumption in the industrial economic development (IED) and industrial wastewater treatment (IWT) stages, the master–slave game relationship between these stages has not been considered. This study selected panel data from 30 provinces in China from 2011 to 2015, divided these provinces into IED- and IWT-dominated regions, and developed a two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) model based on the master–slave game relationship between the IED and IWT stages. In addition, a regression model based on the Simar–Wilson approach was constructed to reveal the effects of urbanization on industrial water consumption efficiency. The results show that the industrial water consumption efficiency in China slightly fluctuated from 2011 to 2015, and there was no significant efficiency improvement. The efficiency of the IED stage was generally higher than that of the IWT stage, and the efficiency gap between stages was smaller in IED-dominated regions than in IWT-dominated regions. Urbanization has different effects on industrial water consumption efficiency, and the same factor can have significantly different effects in different regions. Some policy implications are proposed for the different types of regions.

“…(1) Natural conditions: it is recognized that complex and variable natural conditions (including climatic conditions, soil conditions, hydrological conditions, and the evolution of the irrigation area) can have a direct impact on regional water resources, and thus affect the water use efficiency of agricultural irrigation [26][27][28][29]. A typical example is that of southern China, with its humid climate and abundant rainfall, as well as lack of incentives and motivation to implement water-saving irrigation [30]. (2) The construction and management of the irrigation area: modernization of the construction and management of the irrigation area (which encompasses engineering construction, management systems and mechanisms, and the application of advanced irrigation technology) is an important component in improving irrigation water use efficiency, extreme natural disaster governance, and regional ecological sustainable development, thus providing strong support for the development of modern water-saving agriculture [25,[31][32][33][34][35].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(3) Economic policy: an increasing number of studies have found that economic policy (including subsidy policies, water price policies, and water use restrictions) can affect the preferences and behaviors of peasant households, and provide them with incentives to use water-saving irrigation technology and to change their crop planting structure, which leads to changes in the water use efficiency of agricultural irrigation [36][37][38]. In addition, some scholars have found that other factors such as geographic spatial distribution [30,39], irrigation strategies and planting patterns [40][41][42], and crop types [9,43] have an impact on the water use efficiency of agricultural irrigation.The diversity and complexity of influencing factors make it difficult to predict irrigation water use efficiency and, to our best knowledge, there are few predictive studies on irrigation water use efficiency. Most studies take a biological perspective and measure the water use efficiency of specific crops under different irrigation conditions [44][45][46] or predict the irrigation water demand for a period of time in Sustainability 2019, 11, 7103 3 of 19 Sustainability 2019, 11, 7103 4 of 19of technological diffusion mechanism, the conditional convergence model, is the core tool to predict irrigation water use efficiency.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Prediction of Technological Change under Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and Regional Differences: A Case Study of Irrigation Water Use Efficiency Changes in Chinese Provinces

et al. 2019

Technological changes in water use efficiency directly influence regional sustainable development. However, few studies have attempted to predict changes in water use efficiency because of the complex influencing factors and regional diversity. The Chinese Government has established a target of 0.6 for the effective utilization coefficient of irrigation water, but it is not clear how the coefficient will change in different provinces in the future. The purpose of this study is to predict irrigation water use efficiency changes using a conditional convergence model and combined with the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) scenario settings and hydro-economic (HE) classification to group 31 Chinese provinces by their different economic and water resources conditions. The results show that the coefficient exponentially converges to 0.6 in half the provinces under SSP1 (sustainability), SSP2 (middle of the road), and SSP5 (conventional development) by 2030, whereas SSP3 (fragmentation) and SSP4 (inequality) are generally inefficient development pathways. HE-3 provinces (strong economic capacity, substantial hydrological challenges) achieve the greatest efficiency improvements (with all coefficients above 0.6), and SSP1 is a suitable pathway for these provinces. HE-2 provinces (strong economic capacities, low hydrological challenges) have relatively low efficiency because they lack incentives to save water, and SSP1 is also suitable for these provinces. For most HE-1 provinces (low economic capacity, low hydrological challenges), the coefficients are less than 0.6, and efforts are required to enhance their economic capacity under SSP1 or SSP5. HE-4 provinces (low economic capacity, substantial hydrological challenges) would improve efficiency in a cost-efficient manner under SSP2. utilization efficiency of natural resources, is a possible way to solve the current dilemma of sustainable development [3,4], because it has a direct impact on the total scale of natural resource utilization, and thus directly influences whether the regional social economy is in a sustainable development state [5,6]. Technological change in agriculture irrigation water use efficiency is of fundamental significance for solving water scarcity and increasing crop productivity, and achieving highly efficient irrigation is crucial to balancing water resources input and sustainable agricultural economic growth [7][8][9].The theory of technological change generally distinguishes two types of technological change: technological catch-up and technological diffusion. Technological catch-up concerns the knowledge production function and occurs through the mechanism of learning by doing. It requires continuous additional capital inputs and manufacturers, and the labor force must constantly learn and master new skills in the production process, which brings about extensive progress in social productivity [3,[10][11][12]. Technological diffusion is brought about by technological transmission and is mainly realized through open trade, technology transfer,...