THE EVALUATION OF WATER USE EFFICIENCY BASED ON ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE IN CHINA FOR THE PERIOD 1999-2011

Abstract

Water shortage has been becoming one of the most crucial issues in China, because of the rapidly increasing water demand for economic development. One way of alleviating water scarcity is to increase the efficiency of water use without developing additional water supplies. Therefore it is essential to develop a holistic policy tool which can help the policy-makers to decide the usage of water wisely. The fundamental work is to explicitly quantify the agricultural water use efficiency in target areas. In this study, the agriculture water use efficiency is measured by the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method, and recommendations of sustainable water use are provided.