Can China achieve its water use peaking in 2030? A scenario analysis based on LMDI and Monte Carlo method

Abstract

Faced with water shortage, China has set a control target of 7000×108 m3 of water use in 2030. In the future, how to realize the 2030 water use peak target has become an urgent problem for China to solve. This study aims to predict total water use trend by 2030 under different scenarios and determine the magnitude and time of water use peak. This paper uses the LMDI (Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index) method to decompose the driving factors of the production water use and domestic water use in 2003–2017, and for the first time, combines the scenario analysis and Monte Carlo simulation to analysis the potential evolution trend of production and domestic water use. We found that: (1) Economic development is the primary factor in promoting the increase in total water use, domestic intensity and population scale play a role in promoting increase, production intensity is the primary factor in inhibiting the increase in total water use, industrial structure promotes the decrease of total water use; (2) There are significant differences in the decomposition effects among the three industries; (3) The evolution trend of production and domestic water use is different under the three scenarios. Compared with the baseline scenario, the primary and secondary industry water use decreased more, and the tertiary industry and domestic water use increased less, under the general water-saving scenario and the enhanced water-saving scenario; (4) During the period of 2003–2030, the total water use in all three scenarios experienced an inverted U-shaped. The peaks appeared in 2013, and the total water use (excluding ecological water consumption) was 6078.28×108 m3. The current total water use has reached its peak and been in a stage of stable or even declining stage. Some policy implications are put forward related to our empirical results.