Exploring the Dependence and Influencing Factors of Carbon Emissions from the Perspective of Population Development.

Kuokuo Zhao,Zhanhang Zhou,Peixuan Huang,Xuezhu Cui,Dongliang Li

doi:10.3390/ijerph182111024

Abstract

Working towards sustainable population development is an important part of carbon mitigation efforts, and decoupling carbon emissions from population development has great significance for carbon mitigation. Based on the construction of a comprehensive population development index (PDI), this study adopts a decoupling model to explore the dependence between carbon emissions and PDI across 30 Chinese provinces from 2001 to 2017. Then, the stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence and technology (STIRPAT) model is used to investigate the impact of population factors on carbon emissions. The results show that the decoupling relationship between carbon emissions and PDI has experienced a transformation from expansive negative coupling to expansive coupling and then to weak decoupling at the national level, while some provinces have experienced the same evolutionary process, but the decoupling state in most provinces is not ideal. Sending talent to western provinces and developing low-carbon supporting industries will accelerate carbon decoupling. At the national level, incorporating environmental protection into the existing education system as part of classroom teaching could contribute to carbon decoupling.

Highlights

As working towards sustainable population development is an important part of carbon mitigation efforts, this study conducts a decoupling relationship analysis between carbon emissions and the population development index (PDI) and investigates the influential mechanism between them
The following objectives are achieved in this study: (1) an integral population-related indicator, the PDI, is constructed to reflect the population development features, including population size, age structure, urban–rural structure, employment structure, population quality and personal wealth; (2) the decoupling model is established to investigate the decoupling relationship between carbon emissions and the PDI; and (3) the impact of population factors on carbon emissions are investigated and some suggestions are put forward for promoting carbon decoupling
The main findings and policy implications are as follows: There is a significant increase in the PDI in all of the provinces, the interprovincial gap has widened in terms of population development

Summary

Introduction

With the continuous growth of population and carbon emissions in developing countries, the issue of sustainable population development has attracted attention. In the face of the complex climate change situation, implementing carbon mitigation and sustainable population development strategies to reduce the climate risks caused by carbon emissions has become the top priority of the Chinese government [1]. To realize the coordinated development of the economy, society, resources and the environment, China, the country with the largest population, has experienced the transformation from the family planning policy to the three-child policy and the population sustainable development policy. In order to reduce carbon emissions, the Chinese government has proposed the goal of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 [4]. To achieve the goal of dual carbon emission reduction firstly means that carbon emissions can no longer increase with the social development; that is to say, carbon emission decoupling is the first step to achieve carbon neutrality [5]

Methods

Results

Conclusion