Research On Chinese Provincial Water Use Efficiency Based On The Water Footprint Theory

Water resource is one of the most significant kinds of resource in the world, without which no creature (including human being) in the world could live. Meanwhile it is an important kind of material for human being to be engaged in agricultural and industrial production, economy development and environmental improvement. China owns large quantity of water resource, which ranks number 6 in the world. However, the amount of water per capita only ranks 121 around the world due to its large population. As a result, China is certified as one of the 13 countries who are short of water by the United Nations. There is significant disparity of water using efficient between different areas in China, which could be explained by geography factors, climate factors and the imbalance of economy condition of different areas. The contradiction of using water resource is growing more and more apparent, which is becoming a block to develop regional water resource sustainably.To realize the sustainable development of water resource in China, it is essential to estimate water utilization efficient of different areas scientifically and reasonably. Based on the theory of complex ecosystem, Water resource utilization system is a complicated system, which includes Water resource system, water environment system and social economic system. Etc. The mutual effect of these sub-systems should be considered to evaluate the water utilization efficient of an area.Agriculture and industry are departments who consume the most water resource and the proportion of their consumption has reached beyond 80%. Virtual water trade stands in the third place in the consumption of water footprint. It shows net import in some regions and net export in others, which is decided by the kind of trade structure in that place.Generally water footprint is higher in the East than in the west from the view of how different provinces using the water resource, which is decided by local development condition of economy. Water footprint per person is mainly influenced by the following factors:1, different living standard, racial structure and living customs in different regions.2, differences in grain consumption has resulted in differences in virtual water consumption because of the significant proportion of grain consumption in virtual water consumption.3, China is vast in territory, who is endowed with multiple climate type. Different climate condition (such as tropic and subtropics in South East, temperate continental climate and highland climate in inland) could result in different virtual water quantities of crops, which will further place impact on water footprint per person.4, Discrepancy between urban and rural. Loads of differences exist between city and countryside in China. China is now in progress of urbanization, in which different regions has their own speed. Hence, gap of water footprint is formed.This article chooses some input indexes, which are agricultural water consumption, industry water consumption, living water consumption, regulated asset investment, COD emission and employees. It also chooses output indexes, including grain output and GDP. After these, the author does some comments on the water using efficiency of 31 provinces based on the adopted C2R and BC2 mode. According to the comment result, China is classified into 5 types of regions. The first type region uses water resource with the optimal efficiency and there is no waste in each investment. The relative efficiency value of DEA in second type region is located between 0.9000 and 0.9999, which is well coordinated. The third and forth type of regions are categorized into middle and primary coordination in water resource usage and economy development. Most areas in China could be classified into these two categories, some areas of these 2 types are scale increasing while others are scale decreasing. They have to consider different points when they use water resource in the future.The last type of areas are those who are backward in using water resource and they are expected to reinforce investments in using water resource to consume water reasonably. Generally, water resource using efficiency is higher in the East than in the West, which is decided by the level of economic development.