Balancing low-carbon and eco-friendly development: coordinated development strategy for land use carbon emission efficiency and land ecological security.

Abstract

Correctly identifying and handling the relationship between land use carbon emission efficiency (LUCEE) and land ecological security (LES) are important to promote carbon neutrality in the overall layout of ecological civilization construction. This study takes 30 provinces in China as the research unit and measures the level of LUCEE and LES in each province in the period from 2011 to 2020 via a super-efficient slack-based measure model considering undesirable output. The coupling coordination degree (CCD) of LUCEE and LES is calculated, and its spatiotemporal evolution pattern is explored by kernel density estimation and standard deviational ellipse (SDE). The Dagum Gini coefficient is used to study spatial regional differences and the sources of differences. Results show that (1) China's LUCEE exhibited a downward and then an upward trend, as well as a spatial pattern of "high in the west and low in the east" with obvious regional differences. The LES experienced a positive transformation of "less secure → basically secure → more secure" nationwide, with no apparent regional differences. (2) The kernel density curves showed a continuous increase in CCD in general, while interprovincial differences increased, then decreased, and shifted from multipolar to bipolar differentiation. (3) The migration of SDE centers in CCD demonstrated a path of "southeast → southwest → northeast," and the ellipticity increased from 0.167 to 0.173, showing a trend of concentrated distribution. (4) The overall Gini coefficient of the national CCD indicated a decreasing trend, but imbalances remained, with the largest annual average value in the western region (0.120) and the smallest in the northeast (0.044). The main source of regional disparity was the intensity of transvariation. Accordingly, this study proposes targeted regional development strategies to promote low-carbon sustainable land use and improve the ability of land ecosystems to prevent security risks.