Tian, Xu, Bruckner, Martin, Deng, Yong, Bleischwitz, Raimund. 2019. Trends and driving forces of China’s virtual land consumption and trade. Land Use Policy. 89 104194
BibTeX
Abstract
Land resources are important for China’s rapid economic development, especially for food and construction. China’s land resources are under tremendous pressures, and therefore land use is increasingly displaced to other parts of the world. This study analyses the evolution and driving forces of China’s land consumption from 1995 to 2015. The main results show that China’s land footprint increased from 8.8% of the global land resources under human use in 1995 to 15.7% in 2015. China’s domestic land resources are mainly used for serving domestic consumption. Moreover, China needs to import virtual land from foreign countries to satisfy 30.8% of its land demand. Among the three land use types of cropland, grassland and forests, grassland had the largest fraction in China’s land footprint from 1995 to 2000, while forest has become the largest one since 2000. China’s virtual land trade experienced a sharp increase in net imports from 9.4E + 04 km2 in 1995 to 3.4E + 06 km2 in 2015. Observing China’s virtual land network by a cluster analysis, this study concludes that China keeps tight relationships with Australia, Japan, Brazil and Korea for its cropland consumption, and Canada, USA, Mexico, Australia, Korea and Japan are relevant for its grassland consumption. In addition, decomposition analysis results show that affluence is the major driving factor for China’s land consumption, while changes in land use intensity could mitigate some of the related effects. Lastly, policy recommendations are proposed so that China can move toward sustainable land management.
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Status of publication | Published |
---|---|
Affiliation | WU |
Type of publication | Journal article |
Journal | Land Use Policy |
Citation Index | SSCI |
Language | English |
Title | Trends and driving forces of China’s virtual land consumption and trade |
Volume | 89 |
Year | 2019 |
Page from | 104194 |
Reviewed? | Y |
URL | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837719304454 |
DOI | http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.104194 |
Open Access | N |
Associations
- Projects
- FINEPRINT (Spatially explicit material footprints: Fine-scale assessment of Europe's global environmental and social impacts)
- People
- Bruckner, Martin (Details)
- External
- Bleischwitz, Raimund (University College London, United Kingdom)
- Deng, Yong (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China)
- Tian, Xu (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China)
- Organization
- Institute for Ecological Economics IN (Details)
- Research areas (ÖSTAT Classification 'Statistik Austria')
- 2944 Human ecology (Details)
- 2959 Sustainable development, sustainable economics (Details)
- 4119 Regenerable raw materials (Details)
- 4907 Interdisciplinary agricultural and forestry science (Details)
- 4924 Sustainable development, sustainable economics (Details)
- 5353 Environmental economics (Details)
- 5368 Sustainable development, sustainable economics (Details)
- 5914 Environmental research (Details)