Abstract
There has been renewed interest in assessing the pilot scheme for compiling the natural resources capitalization (NRC). A growing body of evidence highlights the good effects that the policy of NRC has on the construction of ecological civilization. No known empirical research has focused on exploring relationships between the policy of NRC and carbon emissions reduction. This paper employs the NRC as the ecological civilization policy to investigate whether the implementation of NRC has contributed to the carbon emissions reduction with a difference-in-differences (DID) method. The results showed that different variables of carbon emissions in four pilot cities can be effectively affected by the implementation of NRC. There were significant negative correlations between the carbon emissions per GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and the policy for Hulun Buir, Huzhou and Loudi cities, and a significant increase of carbon sequestration was found in Yan’an city. This research provides a timely and necessary study that the NRC policy could be a contributing factor to carbon emissions reduction. As a result of these investigations, suggestions were identified for future research. Further research should be undertaken to investigate the collaborative effects of multi-policies on environmental issues.
Highlights
Global climate change has become one of the biggest challenges to human development and poses a major threat to human society, which has attracted considerable attention, both scholarly and socially (Thomas et al, 2004; Davidson and Janssens, 2006; Meng et al, 2018)
The sample data for pilot and non-pilot cities in this research are obtained from annual China City Statistical Yearbooks (CCSY) and China Environmental Statistics Database (CESD) from 2004 to 2017.4 non-pilot cities are being treated as control groups for each pilot region, considering the complex nature of geographical factors
The empirical results above have proven that the natural resources (NRC) policy can exert positive effects on the carbon emission reduction accompanied by economic growth
Summary
Global climate change has become one of the biggest challenges to human development and poses a major threat to human society, which has attracted considerable attention, both scholarly and socially (Thomas et al, 2004; Davidson and Janssens, 2006; Meng et al, 2018). According to the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in October 2018, the world must control global warming within 1.5°C to avoid extreme climate disasters (IPCC, 2018). When the whole world achieves net-zero emission of greenhouse gases in the middle of the 21st century, can this goal be achieved (Yao et al, 2021). More than 120 countries and regions around the world have put forward the goal of carbon neutrality. 60 countries have promised to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050 or even earlier based on the report of the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2019 (UNFCCC, 2019).
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