Increase or Decrease? The Impact of Land Development Rights Transfer on Regional Carbon Emission Governance

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are a central issue in the conflict between economic development and environmental protection. Optimizing land use to balance development and conservation plays a crucial role in reducing carbon emissions. The transfer of development rights (TDR), as an emerging market-based policy tool, can effectively achieve a “win-win” situation between development and conservation. However, its empirical impact on carbon emission reduction remains insufficiently explored. This study focuses on the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in China. It constructs four scenarios—nature, development, protection, and TDR—using the PLUS model. These scenarios are combined with 2030 projections of energy consumption and socio-economic development generated by a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network and evaluated using the carbon emission factor method. The results indicate that both urban–rural and cross-regional transfers of construction land rights positively contribute to reducing carbon emissions, and their combination yields the most significant benefits. The TDR scenario can protect the ecological environment while effectively controlling the scale of construction space. With a carbon emission level of 77.9 million tonnes, it serves as a rational choice for regional land use. This study contributes to advancing both the theory and practice of low-carbon land use and plays a significant role in optimizing land resource allocation and reducing carbon emissions.