Abstract
Technological changes in water use efficiency directly influence regional sustainable development. However, few studies have attempted to predict changes in water use efficiency because of the complex influencing factors and regional diversity. The Chinese Government has established a target of 0.6 for the effective utilization coefficient of irrigation water, but it is not clear how the coefficient will change in different provinces in the future. The purpose of this study is to predict irrigation water use efficiency changes using a conditional convergence model and combined with the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) scenario settings and hydro-economic (HE) classification to group 31 Chinese provinces by their different economic and water resources conditions. The results show that the coefficient exponentially converges to 0.6 in half the provinces under SSP1 (sustainability), SSP2 (middle of the road), and SSP5 (conventional development) by 2030, whereas SSP3 (fragmentation) and SSP4 (inequality) are generally inefficient development pathways. HE-3 provinces (strong economic capacity, substantial hydrological challenges) achieve the greatest efficiency improvements (with all coefficients above 0.6), and SSP1 is a suitable pathway for these provinces. HE-2 provinces (strong economic capacities, low hydrological challenges) have relatively low efficiency because they lack incentives to save water, and SSP1 is also suitable for these provinces. For most HE-1 provinces (low economic capacity, low hydrological challenges), the coefficients are less than 0.6, and efforts are required to enhance their economic capacity under SSP1 or SSP5. HE-4 provinces (low economic capacity, substantial hydrological challenges) would improve efficiency in a cost-efficient manner under SSP2.
Highlights
When considering the issue of the sustainability of economic growth, the constraints of natural resources and climate change are always present, and the interaction between climate change and economic growth is of increasing concern [1,2]
Technological change in agriculture irrigation water use efficiency is of fundamental significance for solving water scarcity and increasing crop productivity, and achieving highly efficient irrigation is crucial to balancing water resources input and sustainable agricultural economic growth [7,8,9]
Taking an overall view of the five development pathways, the effective utilization coefficients of irrigation water in half of the provinces converge to 0.6 under SSP1, SSP2, and SSP5 by 2030, whereas only nine provinces reach 0.6 under SSP3 and 11 provinces do under SSP4
Summary
When considering the issue of the sustainability of economic growth, the constraints of natural resources and climate change are always present, and the interaction between climate change and economic growth is of increasing concern [1,2]. Technological catch-up concerns the knowledge production function and occurs through the mechanism of learning by doing. It requires continuous additional capital inputs and manufacturers, and the labor force must constantly learn and master new skills in the production process, which brings about extensive progress in social productivity [3,10,11,12]. The conditional convergence model refers to an exponential model that reflects the long-term changes in technological efficiency of economies with similar structural characteristics [17,18,19,20]
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