Abstract
How to advance new urbanization initiatives and reduce the water footprint of industries is one urgent issue about urbanization that needs to be resolved. Based on spatial dynamic panel data, we used the system GMM (Generalized Method of Moments) to study the impact of urbanization on the industrial water footprint. The results show that, overall, urbanization increases the industrial water footprint, industrial virtual water footprint, and industrial gray water footprint in China. There are sectoral and regional differences in the impact of urbanization. Specifically, urbanization reduces the agricultural water footprint and agricultural virtual water footprint but raises the agricultural gray water footprint. Urbanization increases the manufacturing water footprint, manufacturing virtual water footprint, and gray water footprint. Urbanization reduces the virtual water footprint of the service industry but increases the water footprint and gray water footprint in the service industry. At the regional level, urbanization increases the industrial water footprint and gray water footprint across the three major regions. In the eastern region, urbanization has little effect on increasing the industrial water footprint, and reduces the industrial virtual water footprint, whereas in the central and western regions urbanization increases the industrial virtual water footprint. In all three regions, urbanization reduces the agricultural water footprint, increases the manufacturing and service water footprints, reduces the virtual water footprints of agriculture and services, and increases the gray water footprint of agriculture, manufacturing, and services. In the eastern region, the reducing effect of urbanization is the greatest and the increasing effect of urbanization is the smallest. Additionally, in the eastern region, urbanization has reduced the virtual water footprint of manufacturing, whereas in the central and western regions urbanization has increased the virtual water footprint of manufacturing.
Highlights
According to the China Statistical Yearbook, the urbanization rate of China accelerated from less than 18% in 1978 to 59.6% in 2018
(1) Empirical results at the national level: Table 3 shows that as the urbanization level increased by 1%, the industrial water footprint, industrial virtual water footprint, and industrial gray water footprint increased by 0.198%, 0.104%, and 0.137%, respectively, with the significance levels at 10%, 5%, and 5%, respectively
(2) Empirical results at the regional level: As can be seen from Table 3, in the eastern region, as the level of urbanization increased by 1%, the industrial water footprint, industrial virtual water footprint, and industrial gray water footprint changed by 0.103%, −0.076%, and 0.065%, respectively
Summary
According to the China Statistical Yearbook, the urbanization rate of China accelerated from less than 18% in 1978 to 59.6% in 2018. In addition to water shortage, China has a rather serious water pollution problem, accentuating the contradiction between water supply and demand in the process of urbanization. Among the 1935 national surface water monitoring sections, 29% registered water quality readings of Class IV, Class V, and inferior Class V (not meeting the drinking water source standards). Water pollution causes further deterioration of the water quality, harming water ecological environments. This is detrimental to implementing a new round of urbanization and water ecological civilization. Despite these problems, China’s present urbanization rate is still lagging behind developed countries by nearly 20 percentage points, and it is expected that the urbanization process will continue to advance rapidly. This paper will empirically study the impact of urbanization on the water footprint of industries
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
