Horizontal Carbon Ecological Compensation Mechanism In China

As China’s economy moves from high-speed development to high-quality development,reducing carbon emissions has become an important task for China’s future development.Each provincial administrative region is the main body of carbon emission reduction,and carbon neutrality is the goal that each province should achieve.However,with a vast territory,different provinces differ greatly in economic development,resource endowment,industrial layout and strategic positioning,leading to significant differences in their carbon emission levels and carbon sink absorption capacity.Therefore,the degree of difficulty to achieve carbon neutrality varies greatly.It is the only way to achieve carbon neutrality by region.As a new field of ecological compensation research,carbon ecological compensation has become an important measure for many countries in the world to deal with climate change and promote coordinated regional development by adjusting the interest relationship and narrowing the development gap between regions through horizontal fund flow between ecological protection areas and benefit areas,alleviating the pressure on funds of ecological protection areas to a certain extent,and thus realizing ecological justice.Scientifically calculating the amount of horizontal carbon ecological compensation funds in Chinese provinces,and establishing a fairer and more reasonable horizontal carbon ecological compensation mechanism is of great significance for promoting coordinated development among regions,strengthening ecological protection and realizing the "double carbon" goal as scheduled.In view of the availability of trade data,this paper takes 2017 as the year of investigation and considers the carbon emission transfer caused by trade among provinces.Based on the scientific accounting of the forest carbon sinks of various provinces and the carbon emissions based on different responsibilities,the provincial horizontal carbon ecological compensation mechanism under three kinds of carbon emission responsibilities is established respectively.The ecological compensation amount of 30 provincial administrative regions under three circumstances was calculated and analyzed,and the benefit function of emission reduction and increment of local governments was constructed,and the strategy of emission reduction and increment of local governments under the horizontal carbon ecological compensation mechanism was studied.Firstly,the carbon emissions of different provinces under different responsibilities are measured.The results show that the provinces with higher producer responsibility carbon emissions are mostly densely populated provinces with rich mineral resources or developed economy.The carbon emissions of consumer responsibility were higher in the economically developed regions such as Beijing,Zhejiang and Shanghai,and regions with incomplete industrial structure such as Qinghai and Hainan.The carbon emissions of consumer responsibility were significantly lower than those of producer responsibility in the fossil energy-rich provinces such as Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang and the heavy industrial provinces such as Liaoning and Shandong.The carbon emissions shared by the provinces fall between producer responsibility and consumer responsibility.Then,the situation of forest carbon sink resources in our provinces is studied.The spatial pattern and carbon emission of Chinese forest carbon sink are moving in the opposite direction to a certain extent,which means there is obvious spatial difference between Chinese carbon emission and forest carbon sink,and further explains the necessity of developing horizontal carbon ecological compensation among provinces.In terms of net carbon emissions,except for Hainan and Yunnan,where the net carbon emissions are less than 0,the net carbon emissions of other provinces are positive.Most provinces have a big gap between achieving carbon neutrality.Then,the paper studies the strategies of local governments to reduce emissions and increase sinks under the provincial-level carbon ecological compensation mechanism.The results show that,compared with the case without the horizontal carbon ecological compensation mechanism,the horizontal carbon ecological compensation mechanism plays a certain role in promoting the emission reduction and sink increase behavior of carbon paying provinces and carbon receiving provinces.The optimal emission reduction rate of carbon payment province and carbon compensation province decreases with the increase of emission reduction cost and GDP,and increases with the increase of initial carbon emission.When the central government relaxes the carbon constraint on the carbon payment province,the carbon payment province will decide on a lower emission reduction rate and the scale of forest construction,while the carbon compensation province will decide on a higher emission reduction rate and the scale of forest construction because of the more stringent carbon constraint.With the increase of carbon emission rights allocated to carbon paying provinces by the central government,the total emission reduction cost of China will decrease first and then increase,and the critical point will increase when the gap of emission reduction difficulty between carbon paying provinces and carbon paying provinces narrates.Then,the ecological compensation funds of each province based on three kinds of carbon emission responsibilities are studied.The research shows that the carbon ecological compensation mechanism based on producer responsibility carbon emissions favors Beijing,Tianjin,Zhejiang,Chongqing,Jiangxi and other provinces with net product inflow.The carbon ecological compensation mechanism based on consumer responsibility carbon emission preferred Shanxi,Inner Mongolia,Xinjiang,Heilongjiang and other provinces with net product outflow;On the other hand,the compensation amount obtained by the carbon ecological compensation mechanism based on carbon emission sharing responsibility is between the two,and there is no obvious preference.It can not only control carbon emission from the production end and the consumption end at the same time,but also alleviate the problem of "carbon leakage" between regions.After the implementation of carbon ecological compensation,the standard deviation of the general budget revenue among provinces decreased,which proved that the horizontal carbon ecological compensation between provinces had a certain role in narrowing the gap between regions.Finally,by combing the practice of horizontal ecological compensation in our country and based on the beneficial experience and shortcomings of our current practice of horizontal ecological compensation,this paper designs a provincial horizontal carbon compensation system led by the central government and head of carbon compensation fund.In order to provide a theoretical reference for the establishment of carbon compensation mechanism in our country,this paper discussed the main functions of carbon compensation fund,content of carbon compensation account in various provinces,funding source of carbon payment province,supporting safeguards measures and approximate operation process of carbon compensation mechanism.