ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Economics and Management
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1521769
Decoupling analysis of urban water resources utilization and economic development
Provisionally accepted
Qian Li XU1*
Hong Yao sun2- 1Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong, SAR China
- 2Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
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The study constructs a decoupling evaluation model, taking Nanjing City as an example. It is helpful for an in-depth understanding of the sustainable utilization of water resources and the coordination of the relationship between the regional economy and the ecology. In addition, Nanjing's water resource endowment, social background, economic foundation and ecological environment have unique characteristics and significance. Results show that: (1) The water resource ecological footprint tended to decrease gradually and towards flat. Water consumption in industry and agriculture was relatively larger, and there were imbalances in the consumption and distribution of water resources in different social and economic sectors. (2)The carrying capacity of per capita water resources in Nanjing presented a gradual upward and downward trend, roughly manifested as an'M' shape. (3) The average ecological deficit of per capita water resources of the recent 10 years was -0.53hm 2 /person. The average ecological pressure index was 4.54. Therefore, it suggests that there's significant pressure with regard to utilization of water resources and ecological environment protection. (4) The decoupling rate between water resource utilization and economic development has reached around 100%. It proved that economic development helps a city extricate itself from its dependence on water resources.However, the relationship between the development of industry and agriculture and water resource utilization was not at a coordinated pace.
Keywords: Water Resources, Water ecological footprint, Economy, decoupling, Sustainable water resources utilization
Received: 04 Nov 2024; Accepted: 09 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 XU and sun. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Qian Li XU, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong, SAR China
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