Identification of key sectors of water resource utilization in China from the perspective of water footprint

PLOS ONE RESEARCH ARTICLE Identification of key sectors of water resource utilization in China from the perspective of water footprint Guangyao Deng1, Xiaofang Yue ID2*, Lu Miao2, Fengying Lu1 1 School of Statistics, Lanzhou University of Finance and Economics, Lanzhou, PR China, 2 China Center for Special Economic Zone Research, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, PR China a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Deng G, Yue X, Miao L, Lu F (2020) Identification of key sectors of water resource utilization in China from the perspective of water footprint. PLoS ONE 15(6): e0234307. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234307 Editor: Chuanwang Sun, School of Economics, Xiamen University, China, CHINA Received: September 26, 2019 Accepted: May 22, 2020 Published: June 22, 2020 Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234307 Copyright: © 2020 Deng et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: Other researchers may freely access the EORA National IO Tables (Chinese IO Tables) from The Eora Global Supply Chain Database at https://www.worldmrio.com/. Users must first register for an account to access * Abstract We identified the key sectors of water resource use in China from the perspective of the water footprint to improve the use of water resources. The empirical results showed that there were six key sectors (including Crop Cultivation; Forestry; Livestock and Livestock Products; Fishery, Technical Services for Agriculture, Forestry, Livestock and Fishing; Other Food Products, and Scrap and Waste) for water consumption in China in 2015.We analyzed the use of green water, blue water, and grey water. These six sectors accounted for 66.15% of the total impact and 90.76% of the direct impact. Seven key sectors (the six sectors above plus Steel Processing)for the consumption of blue water in China can explain 59.70% of the total impact and 86.94% of the direct effect in 2015. Eight key sectors (Crop cultivation, Other food products, Scrap and Waste, Railway Freight Transport, Highway Freight and Passengers Transport, Water Freight and Passengers Transport, Pipeline Transport, and Health Services) responsible for the consumption of grey water in China in 2015 can explain 81.28% of the total impact and 95.73% of the direct impact. Therefore, the Chinese government should focus on the departments that manage water resources in these sectors when designing water-saving policies and improving water-use efficiency, such as promoting water-saving irrigation technology (including sprinkler irrigation and drip irrigation) in the agricultural sector. Introduction Water, the source of life, drives productivity. China’s demand for production water and domestic water has increased significantly due to its rapid economic development and population growth [1–5]. However, the spatial–temporal distribution of water resources is unbalanced. Therefore, there is a serious imbalance between the supply and demand for water resources. Since there are multiple sectors in any economic system, it is critical to identify which sectors deserve special attention to better manage the limited water resources. In this study, we argue that the key sectors of water resource use are not only the sectors with large water resource consumption but also the sectors where water resource use can greatly promote PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234307 June 22, 2020 1 / 18 PLOS ONE the tables. Additional questions or access requests may be sent to . Funding: This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant [number 71704070]; Ministry of Education for the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Young Fund on the West and Borderland Project [number 17XJC790002]; Guangdong Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant [number 2017A030313443];and Program of Lanzhou University of Finance and Economics under Grant [number Lzufe2018B-06]. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Identification of key sectors of water resource utilization economic growth. Within the production process of each sector, the water consumption includes not only the direct approach but also the indirect approach, that is, water is consumed to produce intermediate productions that are the raw materials for other sectors. Therefore, the key sectors of water resource use need to be identified from the perspective of the water footprint [6]. The identification of key sectors can be traced back to Rasmusen [7] and Hirschman [8]. Based on the input–output model, they defined the sensitivity coefficient and the influence coefficient to describe the role of each sector in the economic system. When the sensitivity coefficient and the influence coefficient of a certain sector are greater than 1, the sector is considered to play a greater role in the economic system and is deemed a key sector. Using various studies from the literature, Alcántaraand Padilla [9] established an input–output model to identify the key sectors of the final energy consumption. They identified the key sectors of Spanish energy consumption based on the demand elasticity of the final energy consumption. Alcántaraand Padilla [10] analyzed the identification of key sectors for carbon emissions from the producers’ perspective and the value-added angle using Spain as an example for their empirical analysis. Othman and Jafari [11] applied the model proposed by Alcántara and Padilla in 2006 [10] and identified the key sectors of carbon emissions in terms of production in Malaysia in 2005. We drew lessons from the researchers noted above to study the identification of the key sectors of water use in China from the perspective of the water footprint to realize the maximum economic value of the water resources and allocate these water resources in a reasonable way in light of the nation’s limited water supply. The water footprint refers to the sum of the direct and indirect water use by a country (region or individual) for production (consumption) [6] [12] [13]. It can be divided into a green water footprint, blue water footprint, and grey water footprint. Green water refers to the water stored in the soil at the root of crops (mainly rain water), blue water refers to rivers, lakes, and groundwater with economic value, and grey water refers to the water needed to purify pollutants in the water. Virtual water refers to the water required in the p (...truncated)