1. Introduction
Water is not only a significant natural resource for maintaining ecological balance, but also a scarce, strategic resource in economic development [
1]. Since the Industrial Revolution, economic development has increasingly relied on water resources. Increasing consumption of fresh water causes water shortages [
2]. Recently, this situation has become more and more severe in China, causing great impact on production and overall quality of life [
3]. In recent years, the Chinese government has paid greater attention to the water issues in some key industries, such as the steel industry, the paper-making industry, the textile industry (TI), and the electricity generation industry [
4].
China is the largest textile producer in the world. The TI is a traditional pillar industry in China and recognized as a precious keystone for China’s domestic economies [
5,
6]. The TI has not only created tremendous growth in some economic indicators, such as profit level, productivity, and selling rate of production, but has also made considerable contribution to market prosperity, the development of the regional economy, and the promotion of employment and social stability [
7]. The gross industrial output value of China’s TI was approximately 168.42 million CNY in 2014, and the average annual growth rate was 13.96% from 2001 to 2014 (converted to 2014 constant prices) [
8,
9].
However, the TI is also one of the industries that consumes enormous quantities of fresh water in China. Water is an important input for the manufacture of fibers, yarns, and cloths. Dyeing, printing, and chemical fiber pulp production are typical processes that consume great amounts of water and discharge enormous amounts of waste water [
10]. The TI consumed approximately 8647.30 Mt fresh water in 2014, ranking seventh among 41 key industries. Nevertheless, water repetitiveness and water productivity of China’s TI are 63.66% and 51.34 Mt/million CNY, respectively, which are much lower than the average value of the major investigated industries (i.e., 89.46% and 94.12 Mt/million CNY) [
8,
9]. Hence, the sustainable development of China’s TI has been restricted by tremendous consumption and relatively low utilization efficiency of water resources. In view of the whole life cycle of textile products, water is a significant factor affecting the production and development of the TI [
11].
The TI was listed as one of the pilot industries aimed at creating the ecological civilization of China in 2014. China’s State Council issued the Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Water Pollution on April 2, 2015 [
4], which requires an improvement in industrial water savings in water-intensive industries (e.g., the TI, steel industry, and electricity generation industry) and the promotion of industrial water recycling. The government also released the 13th Five-Year Plan of the Textile Industry in September 2016. It pointed out that China would strengthen the ecologically sustainable development of the TI and promote advanced water-saving processing technologies and facilities. The phased goals of water consumption and waste water emission in China’s TI are that by 2020, water withdrawal of the added value of the unit industry of the textile industry will decrease by 23%, and the total emission of major pollutants will decrease by 10% [
12]. The decoupling between water consumption and economic growth will promote the realization of the goal of water saving in China’s TI.
The theory of decoupling, first proposed by Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker [
13], leverages the analysis of the relationship between environmental resource pressure and economic growth. In the field of resources and the environment “decoupling” is defined as the process of economic growth as well as material consumption rate that are not synchronized [
14,
15]. The decoupling degree is defined by a system of decoupling indicators, and over the history of decoupling theory, the concept has undergone three development iterations, from a simple two-pronged classification system to the advanced quantitative grading scale that we use today. In the first stage, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) [
16] proposed the use of decoupling indicators to divide “decoupling” into “absolute decoupling” and “relative decoupling” based on the driving force–environmental pressure–environmental condition indicator system. Then, Vehmas [
17] investigated a set of more detailed criteria for describing the decoupling state, which expanded decoupling categorization to include states of strong decoupling, weak decoupling, strong coupling, weak coupling, expansive coupling, and recessive coupling. Eventually, Tapio [
18,
19] introduced the concept of decoupling elasticity and the intermediate variables to measure the decoupling state, improving the measurement of decoupling state both in terms of criteria and methodology. According to the theory, the decoupling state can first be divided into coupling, decoupling, and negative decoupling. It is then subdivided into eight categories by decoupling the elasticity value: weak decoupling, strong decoupling, weak negative decoupling, strong negative decoupling, expansive negative decoupling, expansive coupling, recessive decoupling, and recessive coupling.
A number of studies have researched the decoupling relationship between economic growth and water consumption. Yu [
20] set detailed criteria to evaluate the decoupling of grain production in relation to irrigation water in an agriculture field and studied the decoupling relationship from the perspective of China’s nineteen large agriculture provinces, revealing that only the Guizhou Province has achieved absolute decoupling. Zhu et al. [
21] performed research on the decoupling relationship between water utilization and economic growth based on the data of two provinces in China (Yunnan and Guizhou), which both faced a shortage problem of available water resources. They found that the decoupling state was far from ideal and concluded that the root cause of this discrepancy was the slow growth rate of the economy, low efficiency of water utilization and the unreasonable structure of water utilization. Wu [
22] analyzed the decoupling economic growth in relation to the water consumption of China from 1953 to 2010 and explained the inner principle systematically. Zhang and Yang [
23] used the water footprint method to study the decoupling relationship among water consumption, water environmental pressure, and crop production. Their research shows that strong decoupling occurs more often between the water consumption and crop production, while weak decoupling mostly occurs between the environmental pressure and crop production. Gilmont [
24] focused on the case of Israel and found that semi-arid economies are facing challenges of an ever-widening gap between total national water use and local water withdrawn from natural resources, showing that decoupling includes two types: with an economy that is no longer water sufficient or an economy which is able to make up for the over-exploitation of natural water. Gilmont [
25] also figured out how the virtual water flows decouple with food imports based on the food trade. The results show that the production intensity of many major crops produced in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are much higher than the global average blue water level, expressing the fact that trade can not only reduce the blue water of MENA, but also enable the network to reduce global blue water. Wang et al. [
26] developed the environmental pressure (including water resource) decoupling analysis to obtain the corresponding decoupling state in Tianjin, China, and put forward policy suggestions to promote further sustainable development. Zhang et al. [
27] evaluated the resource decoupling (energy and water consumption) and environmental impact (wastewater, SO
2, and CO
2) from the economic growth in China. They obtained the results that the decoupling state of resource consumption is worse than the wastewater and SO
2 decoupling, but is much better than CO
2 decoupling. From the literature presented, research on the decoupling of economic growth and water consumption is still limited in many regions and nations. Additionally, current studies generally agree with this idea and analysis of the decoupling state, and fail to perform further decomposition to investigate the driving factors of water consumption.
Considering that the contradiction between water supply and water demand is becoming more and more severe in China’s TI, a comprehensive study of the interactions between water consumption and economic growth and its inherent influence mechanism is particularly important for the sustainable development in the future. Therefore, we investigated the relationship between water consumption and economic growth of China’s textile industry with decoupling methodology. The influencing factors of the relationship were also analyzed with the Laspeyres decomposition method. The results from these analyses will fill the gap in the scientific research on decoupling between water consumption and economic growth. Furthermore, trying to solve the water shortage problem arising from the large water consumption industries is also of great value to the self-development of the TI, and even the healthy development of China’s industrial economy.
This paper is organized as follows:
Section 2 offers an overview of the main methodology and data this paper uses to investigate the relationship between water consumption and the economic growth of the TI; and
Section 3 evaluates the water usage situation of the TI and its three sub-industries; then it analyzes and discusses the decoupling states, eventually turning out to be a report of the main results of decomposition analysis.
Section 4 concludes the study.