Youguo Zhang - Spillover and Feedback Effects in Low Carbon Development

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Global warming is an environmental challenge facing all of humanity. As the worlds largest developing country and one of the largest carbon emitters, China has on many occasions and through a series of pledges declared its commitment to playing a key role in climate change mitigation. Most notably, China announced at the United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Paris in November 2015 its intention to reach carbon dioxide emissions peak no later than 2030.

However, rising levels of economic development will not lead to carbon emissions peak as a matter of course, and the Chinese government urgently needs to determine which route and policies to adopt to achieve its emissions peak and intensity targets. Instead of imposing rigid constraints on economic growth and social development, the right route and policies would facilitate the green and low-carbon transformation of the Chinese economy (He 2014). But making the wrong choices in our carbon policies may well deal a serious blow to the countrys economic and social development, or worse, lead to a hard landing.

This is why these strategy and policy questions about emissions reduction in China have not only generated considerable interest and concern among diverse groups of citizens but also become the subject of many academic studies. Of the range of related issues the most pressing is what emissions targets China should set itself, for different regions and time periods (He 2014; Chen and Groenewold 2015). On the one hand, in a country of such a vast territory, significant regional differences exist in terms of level of economic and social development, place in the national economy, when emissions are forecast to peak, projected peak emission level, and how motivated it is to reach a peak (Chen and Groenewold 2015). On the other hand, different regions are also closely connected to one another through a variety of social and economic ties, which should be fully taken into consideration in strategy decisions and policy designs (Meng et al. 2013).

Therefore, a top priority for the Chinese government is to find the best way to coordinate development among different regions under low-carbon constraints by transforming current regional development patterns, mode of production and lifestyle, with the ultimate aim of realizing the compatibility between ecological protection and social and economic development. This book presents the authors understanding of what light economics can shed on this cluster of issues.

When a large system achieves coordinated development, its various subsystems behave in ways that both supplement and complement one another. Not only does each subsystem put its own advantages to maximum use but it also makes up for what it lacks by drawing on what other subsystems have. It is a state marked by maximal mutual adaptation, support, cooperation and collaboration among the different subsystems of a larger system and minimal tension among them. For any dynamic system as a whole, this represents development optimality.

When we add a regional dimension to the above concept, we get that of coordination in regional development. Notably, the scope of coordination in regional development is not confined to any one particular region, but is broad enough to cover the common development of multiple regions. It calls for treating different regions as constituting an organic whole, in which each region is an indispensable subsystem, at once independent from and closely connected with other regions. Furthermore, coordination in regional development does not mean that multiple regions are considered as a whole without distinction, or that the focus is on only one of them without considering other regions and the whole of all regions. It is to attain overall objectives on the basis of taking fully into account the ties among regions and the objectives of each region.

Low-carbon development is a model of sustainable development characterized by low carbon emissions. Its other properties can include low energy intensity and low levels of pollution. This is how low-carbon development is understood as a static concept, which refers to the ideal state once it has been achieved. However, the ideal state cannot be achieved overnight. Realizing it always requires the joint efforts of all members of the society, and often takes a long time. Therefore, understood as a dynamic concept, that is, encompassing all stages of development, low-carbon development can be defined as [a mode of development marked by] efforts to achieve social and economic development goals while reducing carbon emissions as much as possible, and ultimately to free economic growth from its dependency on carbon consumption.

The concept of regional coordination in low-carbon development is obviously the combination of coordination in regional development and low-carbon development. In other words, both the criteria of coordination in regional development and low-carbon development must be met. If low-carbon development is the purpose and coordination is considered as a constraint or approach, regional coordination in low-carbon development can be understood as a state in which the advantages and initiative of each region in a certain area are brought into play to foster benign interactions between regions and thus enable each region and the whole area to achieve low-carbon development to the maximum extent. Similarly, if low carbon is considered as a constraint, to pursue regional coordination in low-carbon development means to achieve coordination in regional development in a certain area, and then the common development of all regions in the area.