Impact of urban and rural food consumption on water demand in China—From the perspective of water footprint

With the rapid development of society and economy, changes happened dramatically in the food consumption and structure among Chinese residents. This paper analyzes the impact of residents' food consumption on water resources in China from the perspective of water footprint (WF), which is important to promote water conservation from the consumption side. After calculating the WFs of urban and rural residents' food consumption, the paper explored the drivers of WFs through the extended Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology (STIRPAT) model, and then scenario analysis was applied to investigate how to reduce water depletion of food consumption in China. The results showed that (1) There were increasing trends in the per capita WFs of urban and rural residents' food consumption from 2000 to 2020, and the per capita WFs in urban were higher than that of rural. (2) Between 2000 and 2020, the total WFs of urban residents' food consumption had risen by 370.20 billion m³, while the total WFs had decreased from 407.20 billion m³ to 310.64 billion m³ in rural as urbanization increased. (3) Consumption quantity and population size were the main factors driving the changes in WFs of food consumption between urban and rural residents. (4) Under the scenarios of baseline, consumption upgrading, and saving food, an upward tendency could be observed in the WFs of rural residents' food consumption, while the WFs were expected to peak around 2030 in urban. This paper argued that it was possible to achieve the goal of reducing water depletion by controlling the food consumption of urban and rural residents. Under these conditions, this paper proposes to develop a water-saving consumption pattern in terms of optimizing the dietary structure and advocating food conservation between urban and rural residents.