Ecological Land Protection or Carbon Emission Reduction? Comparing the Value Neutrality of Mainstream Policy Responses to Climate Change

Yujie Ren,Tianhui Fan

doi:10.3390/f12121789

Abstract

Improving the quality of forest, water, farmland, and other types of land use with outstanding ecosystem optimization, restoration functions (ecological lands) and reducing anthropogenic carbon emissions are recognized as the two main approaches of current mainstream climate change policies. The paper aims to evaluate and compare the value neutrality within these two main types of policy responses to climate change. To do that, a case study was conducted at the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China. We first summarized the implementation status of all climate change policies in the study area and collected data related to climate and economy at the policy pilot sites. Next, the coupling relationship between climate and socio-economic conditions at policy pilot sites was calculated by the Tapio model. Finally, we constructed dummy variables that reflected the status of policy implementation, to estimate the value neutrality of mainstream climate change policies and their impact on the coupling relationship by DID models. The results showed that the proportion of policies related to ecological lands that significantly improved the coupling degree between climate and socio-economic conditions of the pilot sites is more than that of carbon emission-related ones. Moreover, the average coupling degree between climate and socio-economic conditions of the pilot sites of ecological land policies was significantly increased by 3.99 units after policy implementation, which is 27.8% higher than that of carbon emission reduction policies. Generally, the two main findings directly evidenced that the climate change policies aimed at improving the area and quality of ecological lands were more conducive to the coupling development of the climate–economy nexus than the policies focusing on restricting carbon emissions, which provides important enlightenment for the establishment of relevant environmental policies around the world.

Highlights

In order to deal with the negative impacts of climate change [1], national governments around the world have issued policies to curb the harm on human health and destruction of natural resources caused by it [2,3]
The average coupling degree between climate and socio-economic conditions in the pilot sites of ecological land policies was significantly increased by 3.99 units after policy implementation, which is 27.8% higher than that of carbon emission reduction policies
These two main results directly evidenced that the climate change policies aimed at improving the area and quality of ecological lands were more conducive to the coupling development of the climate–economy nexus than the policies focusing on restricting carbon emissions, which provides important enlightenment for the establishment of relevant environmental policies around the world

Summary

Introduction

In order to deal with the negative impacts of climate change [1], national governments around the world have issued policies to curb the harm on human health and destruction of natural resources caused by it [2,3]. The optimization of management of forests and water ecosystems and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions were recognized as the priority areas of climate change response policies [4,5]. A large number of confirmed basic scientific correlations evidenced that the concentration of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere directly affects the global average temperature [9,10]. The concentration of greenhouse gases has been rising, and the global average temperature has increased [11]. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions (especially carbon dioxide) from human activities was considered to be an effective approach to reduce the pace and side-effects of climate change [12,13]

Methods

Results

Conclusion