Research on the Decoupling of Water Resources Utilization and Agricultural Economic Development in Gansu Province from the Perspective of Water Footprint

Objectively evaluating the decoupling status of water resources utilization and economic development is an important sign of judging the sustainability of regional economic development. From the perspective of water footprint (WF), this paper expands the scope of water resources accounting by assessing agricultural blue WF, green WF and gray WF. The Tapio decoupling index was used to explore the decoupling status of agricultural WF and economic development in Gansu Province from 2006 to 2015, and the logarithmic mean divisor index (LMDI) decomposition model was used to identify the main driving factors of agricultural WF changes and explore the degree of divergence between agricultural economic development and water resources utilization. The results showed that agricultural economic growth was a main factor for the increase of WF; the improvement of agricultural production technology had a restraining effect, and the population effect and structural effect had a lesser effect. During the research period, the relationship between agricultural WF and economic growth in Gansu Province changed from weak decoupling to strong decoupling, and the contributing factors to decoupling were in descending order: economic, technological, structural and population. Finally, this paper puts forward suggestions on optimizing planting structure, improving agricultural technology and economic development mode to promote the sustainable development of local agriculture.