Quantifying the Provincial Carbon Emissions of China Embodied in Trade: The Perspective of Land Use

Land use supports production and living activities and provides ecosystem services for people. With the flow of capital, goods, and services among regions, trade leads to the transfer of carbon emissions from importing regions to exporting regions, and this is telecoupled with land systems in different regions. Although significant progress has been made in quantifying embodied carbon emissions induced by interprovincial and international trade, the telecoupling relationship between carbon emissions and land systems has not been sufficiently investigated. Here we followed the telecoupling theoretical framework and used the multi-region input–output (MRIO) model to examine the spatial pattern of embodied carbon emissions by land use in China due to interprovincial trade. The results show that the spatial patterns of embodied carbon emissions from the production end and from the consumption end are different based on land use type. The provinces with rich energy resources and favorable conditions such as Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Heilongjiang undertake carbon emissions from the agricultural and industrial land use of other provinces. In contrast, the provinces with large economies but scarce resources such as Zhejiang and Guangdong export larger portions of their carbon emissions to the land use of other provinces. Across China, developed regions generally exported more carbon emissions from land use than they undertake from other developing regions. The carbon transfer in agricultural land was prominent between the eastern and western regions. The carbon emissions of industrial land were generally transferred from southern regions to northern and western areas. Our research reveals different patterns of embodied carbon emissions for different land use types, and these findings could provide more detailed information for policy-making processes to achieve fair carbon emissions and sustainable land use.