Abstract
The rapid development of China’s textile industry has led to consumption and pollution of large volumes of water. Therefore, the textile industry has been the focus of water conservation and waste reduction in China’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–2020). The premise of sustainable development is to achieve decoupling of economic growth from water consumption and wastewater discharge. In this work, changes in the blue water footprint, grey water footprint, and the total water footprint of the textile industry from 2001 to 2014 were calculated. The relationship between water footprint and economic growth was then examined using the Tapio decoupling model. Furthermore, factors influencing water footprint were determined through logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) method. Results show that the water footprint of China’s textile industry has strongly decoupled for five years (2003, 2006, 2008, 2011, and 2013) and weakly decoupled for four years (2005, 2007, 2009, and 2010). A decoupling trend occurred during 2001–2014, but a steady stage of decoupling had not been achieved yet. Based on the decomposition analysis, the total water footprint mainly increased along with the production scale. On the contrary, technical level is the most important factor in inhibiting the water footprint. In addition, the effect of industrial structure adjustment is relatively weak.
Highlights
The concept of decoupling, which originated from physics, indicates the reduction or elimination of the mutual relationship between two or more physical quantities
Achieving decoupling between economy and environment is the key step for implementing green economic development, which is the basic goal of human development as proposed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [2]
Decoupling can be achieved by forcing people to rethink the nexus among resource utilization, environmental quality, and economic growth [3]
Summary
The concept of decoupling, which originated from physics, indicates the reduction or elimination of the mutual relationship between two or more physical quantities. Decoupling analysis is widely applied and has received great attention in studies of economic growth in relation to environmental pressure [1]. Decoupling refers to breaking the link between economic wealth growth and environmental hazards. Achieving decoupling between economy and environment is the key step for implementing green economic development, which is the basic goal of human development as proposed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [2]. Decoupling can be achieved by forcing people to rethink the nexus among resource utilization, environmental quality, and economic growth [3].
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