Do water-saving policies improve water-use technical efficiency? Evidence from the water-receiving cities of China’s South–North Water Transfer Project

IF 2.9 3区 社会学 Q1 DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
Jichuan Sheng, M. Webber
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引用次数: 1

Abstract

ABSTRACT China has implemented a series of water-saving policies in response to the growing threat of water shortages. However, it remains unclear whether these water-saving policies, which aim to reduce water-use intensity, will actually improve water-use technical efficiency. This study scrutinizes water-use technical efficiency within an extended human-environment framework by using the case of China's South–North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP). An improved estimation method for water-use technical efficiency based on stochastic frontier analysis is adopted to empirically investigate the variations in water-use intensity and technical efficiency in the SNWTP's water-receiving cities. This study argues that there is no definitive link between improvements in water-use technical efficiency and decreases in water-use intensity, and thus water-saving policies oriented toward reducing water-use intensity do not necessarily increase water-use technical efficiency. In addition, achieving the goals of water-saving policies by reducing water use intensity alone remains challenging and requires improving the water-use technical efficiency caused by endogenous technological progress. Finally, setting a unified target to reduce water-use intensity leads to inequitable sharing of water-saving tasks between regions, resulting in conflicts of interest among government bureaucracies.
节水政策是否提高了用水技术效率?来自中国南水北调工程受水城市的证据
为应对日益严重的水资源短缺威胁,中国实施了一系列节水政策。然而,这些旨在降低用水强度的节水政策是否真的能提高用水技术效率还不清楚。本研究以中国南水北调工程为例,在扩展的人-环境框架下审视水资源利用技术效率。采用改进的基于随机前沿分析的水资源利用技术效率估算方法,实证研究了水源区受水城市用水强度和技术效率的变化规律。本研究认为,水利用技术效率的提高与水利用强度的降低之间没有明确的联系,因此,以减少水利用强度为目标的节水政策不一定能提高水利用技术效率。此外,仅通过降低用水强度来实现节水政策的目标仍然具有挑战性,需要提高由内生技术进步引起的用水技术效率。最后,制定统一的降低用水强度的目标会导致节水任务在地区之间的分配不公平,从而导致政府官僚机构之间的利益冲突。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
7.00
自引率
6.20%
发文量
46
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