Search

Sugar is the largest agricultural crop by mass and has seen a rapid increase in consumption around the world. There are widespread public health efforts to curb sugar intake through targeted policies given its association with noncommunicable diseases. Although curbing sugar intake aligns with sustainable diets that meet essential environmental and health targets, such a shift may be challenging from a political economy perspective. Utilizing sugar for other purposes such as the production of microbial protein, biofuels, and bioplastics, or using sugar lands to grow other food items, or rewilding could provide health and environmental win–wins that could be more politically palatable. Here, we explore several potential scenarios to illustrate the option space from which national and international stakeholders could choose locally appropriate pathways for alternative utilization of sugar or its lands. While beneficial, such alternative pathways would require the integration of environmental, economic, and health policies to provide a smoother diet transition that reduces stakeholder tensions. Given the trade in sugar as a commodity crop, international approaches that compensate sugar producers for avoided production or incentivize them for redirecting sugars to other uses will be needed. Such approaches could borrow concepts from Just Transition Partnerships that have been applied to energy system transitions in ensuring a transition for major exporters of sugar cash crops across low- and middle-income nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China produces a huge amount of CO 2 emissions that need to be reduced to comply with international commitments. Identifying the driving factors is critical for achieving mitigation targets and transiting toward a low-carbon economy in China. This study is one of the first few attempts to apply panel data and spatial econometrics models to analyze the spatial dependence of province-level CO 2 emission intensity and the economic drivers of such emissions. First, we conducted a systematical review of the development of spatial econometrics. Second, we generated a panel data set about energy and socioeconomic development of 30 provinces and municipalities in China from 2005 to 2012. Next, we chose the most appropriate model to explain the predominant factors of energy-related CO 2 emissions based on a series of tests of the spatial econometrics models. The results suggested that technology improvement, adjustment of industrial and energy structures, and environmentally friendly behaviors and patterns of consumption of habitants play an important role in CO 2 emissions mitigation. The results also revealed that CO 2 emissions had strong spatial spillover effects, which indicate that policies adopted in one province will affect policy-making in neighboring provinces, implying that provinces need take combined action to balance climate change mitigation and economic policy goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human interventions, such as farmland management, have long been considered crucial for soil carbon sequestration, but little is known about the exact impact of these interventions on the net carbon flux, represented by net ecosystem productivity (NEP). Here, using multiple long-term, large-scale data and statistical data, we reveal that 75.54% of farmland NEP in China experiences an increase, with northern regions showing the greatest potential for future farmland carbon sequestration. This growth is primarily attributed to the role of farmland management, especially the enhancement of no-tillage, land consolidation and multiple cropping level (17.02%, major grain-producing areas in 2020). Notably, the current unreasonable practices of mechanized straw returning and irrigation have a negative impact on farmland NEP. Our results show that it is imperative to acknowledge the crucial role of human interventions on farmland NEP to strike a balance between food security and farmland carbon sequestration., Competing Interests: Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2024. The Author(s).)