An Assessment of Water Resources Utilization in Chuxiong,Yunnan Province by Water Footprint

The concept of water footprint is developed to have an indicator of water use in relation to people's consumption.The water footprint of a country or a region is defined as the volume of water needed for the production of the goods and services consumed by the inhabitants of that country or region.Water footprint can be divided into green,blue and grey water footprints.There are two ways to calculate water footprints.Firstly,the water footprint of a nation or region can be assessed by making use of domestic water resources.Secondly,the water footprint can be calculated by multiplying the amount of production of goods and services consumed by the inhabitants of that country or region with the virtual water content of the corresponding products which are often expressed in terms of cubic meters of water per ton of the product(=litres/kg).In this paper,we put forward the concept of water paper and the ways of water paper and the ways to calculation.Then we computed the water footprint of Chuxiong State in Yunnan Province in 2005.The result shows that water footprint of Chuxiong in 2005 is 13.257×108 m3,which means everyone has 516.52 m3.In total water use for production,49.4% of water has flowed out of the region in virtual water.This is not good for Chuxiong because in arid regions water is very scarce.This paper analyzes the ways to solve the problem of water shortage.It also analyzes the structure of water footprint and brings forward some ways to reduce water footprints in order to alleviate water shortage.