RESUMEN
The COVID-19 outbreak has injured the global industrial supply chain, especially China as the world's largest manufacturing base. Since 2020, China has implemented a rigorous lockdown policy, which has sternly damaged sectoral trade in export-oriented coastal areas. Fujian Province, which mainly processes imported materials, has a more profound influence. Although the COVID-19 lockdown has had some detrimental consequences on the world economy, it also had some favorable benefits on the global ecology. Previous studies have shown that the lockdown has altered the physical water quantity and quality, but the lack of total, virtual, and physical water research that combines water quantity and water quality simultaneously to pinpoint the subject and responsibility of water resources consumption and pollution. This research quantified the physical, virtual, and total water consumption and water pollution among 30 sectors in Fujian Province based on the theory of water footprint and the Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment model. SDA model was then used to investigate the socioeconomic elements that underpin variations in the water footprint. The results show that after the lockdown, the physical water quantity and the physical grey WF in Fujian Province decreased by 2.6 Gm3 (-6.7%) and 0.4 Gm3 (-1.3%) respectively. The virtual water quantity decreased by 2.3 Gm3 (-4.5%), whereas the virtual grey WF rose by 1.5 Gm3 (4.3%). The total water quantity dropped by 3.3 Gm3 (-4.9%), while the grey WF increased by 1.2 Gm3 (2.5%), i.e. the COVID-19 lockdown decreases physical water quantity and improves local water quality. More than 50% of the water comes from virtual water trade outside the province (virtual water is highly dependent on external), and around 60% of the grey WF comes from physical sewage in the province. The COVID-19 lockdown reduced water outsourcing across the province (paid nonlocally decrease) but increased pollution outsourcing (paid nonlocally increase). And gross capital formation's contribution to the growth in water footprint will continue to rise. As a result, this study suggested that Fujian should take advantage of sectoral trade network to enhance the transaction of green water-intensive intermediate products, reduce the physical water consumption of blue water-intensive sectors, and reduce the external dependence on water consumption. Achieving the shared responsibility of upstream and downstream water consumption and reducing the external dependence on water in water-rich regions is crucial to solving the world's water problems. This research provides empirical evidence for the long-term effects of COVID-19 lockdown on the physical and virtual water environment.
RESUMEN
It is of great significance to clarify the decoupling relationship among resource consumption, environmental pollution, and economic growth, and to uncover the driving mechanism within the relationship for Fujian Province, one of the national ecological civilization construction demonstration zones. By constructing the "water-energy-carbon" resource and environment input-output model, we analyzed the industrial "water-energy-carbon" resource and environment pressure in Fujian Province. On the basis of the decoupling theory and Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index method, we explored the decoupling among resource consumption, environmental pollution, and economic growth and detected driving factors behind the decoupling state in various industries. The results showed that resource and environmental pressure state dominated by virtual water in Fujian Province had shifted to the multi-dimensional resource and environmental pressure state dominated by implied carbon from 2002 to 2017. There were distinctive differences among various industries. From the perspective of industry sectors, there was a relatively high direct resource and environmental pressure in the production and supply sector, as well as a more distinguishing indirect resource and environmental pressure in the manufacturing sector. The decoupling state generally appeared reasonable, mainly in weak decoupling and strong decoupling states. The economic and population effects were the two main factors inhibiting the decoupling sate, while the technical and structural effects promoted the decoupling state.