Abstract
Land resources have become one of the major factors limiting urban development in China. In the context of sustainable development, how to improve land use efficiency (LUE) has become a major challenge on the road to sustainable development in China. Carbon finance provides a new idea for sustainable development. With the help of carbon emissions trading policy (CETP), this paper aims to investigate whether carbon finance can optimize LUE in terms of economic effects and environmental effects. Based on the data of 158 prefectural-level cities in China from 2010 to 2017, this paper uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis to investigate these issues. Specifically, this paper measures the land use efficiency from economic effects (LUE_Eco) and environmental effects (LUE_Env) using the entropy method, and visualizes the data to obtain information on their spatio-temporal evolution patterns. Furthermore, this paper verifies the causal relationship between policy implementation and LUE_Eco and LUE_Env by using the difference in differences (DID) method. The conclusions show that: (1) the levels of LUE_Eco and LUE_Env in the pilot regions generally increase after the implementation of the CETP, but only the increase of LUE_Env is due to the policy implementation; (2) the CETP not only effectively reduces CO2 emissions, but also promotes the reduction of industrial ‘three wastes’ emissions. Accordingly, this paper has gained insights on how to improve LUE in China.
Highlights
United Nations statistics indicate that the global urban population is expected to reach70% in 2050
With the help of carbon emissions trading policy (CETP), this paper aims to investigate whether carbon financial behavior can optimize land use efficiency (LUE)
It is reasonable to tentatively infer that the CETP did not improve the land use efficiency from economic effects (LUE_Eco) in the pilot areas, and the optimization in Chongqing may be due to other factors
Summary
United Nations statistics indicate that the global urban population is expected to reach70% in 2050. United Nations statistics indicate that the global urban population is expected to reach. The deepening of global urbanization implies the increasing prominence of cities as the main carriers of human life [1]. Cities have become an important driver of national economic development, which in turn feeds the urbanization process [2,3]. The quality of cities is related to the degree of ecosystem health and human well-being of future generations [4]. In China, the urbanization rate has increased from 17.90% at the beginning of reform and opening-up to 58.52% in 2017, and the upward trend is still obvious [5,6]. Rapid urbanization has brought many problems to
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