Abstract
Water resources’ use efficiency is an important issue under China’s rapid economic growth. This is because some provinces’ economic development may be delayed due to lack of adequate water resources. Whereas, high economically developed provinces may overuse water resources in order to achieve their economic goals; while also creating a large amount of pollutants. To assess water resources’ use efficiency from the resampling super data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach, our research comprehensively utilizes the following as inputs and outputs: (1) water resources: supply of water (SW), per capita water consumption (PCWC), and total water resources (TWR); (2) economic development: gross domestic product (GDP); (3) environmental issues: governance wastewater investment (GWI), wastewater discharge (WD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), and other major pollutants (OMP). The results show that Tibet, Beijing, Guangdong, Qinghai, Shandong, Sichuan, Yunnan, Tianjin, Jiangsu, and Henan have relatively good water resources’ use efficiency with efficiency values larger than 1. The best efficiency is in 2015, while the worst is in 2017. Water resources’ use efficiency shows significant regional differences in 2013–2017, with the best average efficiency value in southwest China (1.4355) and the worst in north China (0.2987). The results of the Wilcoxon test present that PCWC, GDP, COD, and OMP exhibit very significant differences, PN and WD have significant differences, and SW and TWR have no significant influence. These results imply that China’s regional governments must formulate a better water resource strategy based on the water resource distribution of each region. Lastly, the emissions of environmental pollutants must be strictly monitored.
Highlights
Water pollution has worsened in almost all the rivers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America ever since the 1960s, with the greatest amount of pollutants occurring in low- and lower-middle income countries, primarily due to higher populations and economic growth and the lack of wastewater management systems
We find the key variables of the impacts of inputs and outputs on water resources’ use efficiency and find that the main key variables are the environmental variables wastewater discharge (WD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), and other major pollutants (OMP)
The largest eigenvector of Principal component regression (PCR) is WD (0.94), and its proportion is very high up to 54.23%, it indicates that most decision making unit (DMU) in China must work to reduce WD in the future
Summary
Water pollution has worsened in almost all the rivers in Africa, Asia, and Latin America ever since the 1960s, with the greatest amount of pollutants occurring in low- and lower-middle income countries, primarily due to higher populations and economic growth and the lack of wastewater management systems. 1.2 billion in 2018 to around 1.6 billion in 2050; these phenomena will directly impact the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of the eco-economy [1]. Water 2019, 11, 1069 billion or around 1% of the world’s GDP [2]. China’s TWR were not stable in the period 2010–2017, as seen, total water supply (SW) is the same as TWR, while the total amount of wastewater discharged hit 700 billion tons in 2017. While China’s gross domestic product (GDP) has increased year by year from 592,963 billion CN¥ to 820,754 billion CN¥ over the period 2013–2017, sewage treatment investment (STI) has risen yearly from 2013–2017 by 1055, 1196, 1249, 1486, and 1728 billion CN¥ [3], respectively.
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