Predicting the Water Rebound Effect in China under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways.

Aijun Guo,Fanglei Zhong,Xiaoyu Song,Yuan Song,Daiwei Jiang,Rong Zhang

doi:10.3390/ijerph18031326

Abstract

The rebound effect exists widely in the fields of energy, irrigation, and other resource utilizations. Previous studies have predicted the evolution of different resource utilizations under the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs), but it is still unclear whether total water use has a rebound effect. This study uses the SSPs as the basic prediction framework and evaluates the water resources and economic status of the provinces in China using the hydro-economic (HE) classification method. Then, combined with the SSPs scenario setting parameters, the conditional convergence model and the method recommended by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) are used to simulate the changes in water use efficiency of the different provinces in China under different scenarios. Based on the future GDP forecast data of China’s provinces, combined with the forecast of water use efficiency changes, the total water use changes in China’s 31 provinces under different pathways from 2016 to 2030 are calculated. Among them, the future GDP data is predicted based on the Cobb–Douglas production function and SSPs scenario settings. Using a comprehensive evaluation of the evolution of the efficiency and the total amount, this study reveals whether there is a rebound effect. The results showed that with the continuous growth in the water use efficiency, the total water use had a “U” type trend, which indicated that there was a rebound effect in the total water use of China under the different SSPs. Based on this information, this study proposes some suggestions for irrigation water-saving technologies and policies.

Highlights

IntroductionIntroduction published maps and institutional affilThe “rebound effect” is a concept used in energy research that can help us more clearly quantify the impact of water productivity on water use [1]
Introduction published maps and institutional affilThe “rebound effect” is a concept used in energy research that can help us more clearly quantify the impact of water productivity on water use [1]
With improvements in local small-scale efficiencies, this often leads to an expansion of the resource utilization scale, which leads to an increase in resource consumption at a larger scale

Summary

Introduction

Introduction published maps and institutional affilThe “rebound effect” is a concept used in energy research that can help us more clearly quantify the impact of water productivity on water use [1]. The rebound effect was first proposed by Jevons [2]. He found that more efficient steam engines reduced coal consumption, and led to a drop in coal prices, which increased the demand for coal (“Jevons’ Paradox”). Research in the field of water resources has found that the agricultural water supply has a rebound effect [5,6,7,8]. With improvements in local small-scale efficiencies, this often leads to an expansion of the resource utilization scale, which leads to an increase in resource consumption at a larger scale. The ultimate result of the practice of reducing the resource consumption per unit output and reducing the total resource utilization through technological progress is often very complicated [9]

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion