Overt and covert: The relationship between the transfer of land development rights and carbon emissions

The greenhouse effect is a prominent climate issue affecting the whole world. Changes in land-use intensity are an important contributor to carbon emissions. In this context, it is arguably important to explore the multiple linkages between land use intensity changes caused by the transfer of land development rights, and carbon emissions. In this study, we applied the CLUMondo model to simulate changes in land use and the carbon emissions caused by it under different policy scenarios in Fangchenggang, Guangxi, China from 2015 to 2030. The carbon emission coefficient was used as a measure of the carbon emission capacity of different land use types. Results show that implementing the land development rights transfer policy can mitigate the increase in carbon emissions throughout the region to a relative maximum extent, and lead to the associated spatial transfer of carbon emission rights. Increasing both the efficiency and the intensity of land use will meet the demand for land incurred by urbanization, and will reduce the occupation of ecological land. These findings indicate that the implementation of the land development rights transfer policy can promote the integration of social, economic and ecological objectives; that is, the optimization of the land use structure and the realization of ecological environment objectives can be achieved simultaneously.