Are Poverty Alleviation and Carbon Reduction Parallel Paths? Empirical Research on the Interaction Between Poverty Alleviation and Carbon Emissions

• Published date: 01 September 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10704965231190128
• Author: Li Haoyan,Hui Jiang,Wu Zhongqi
• Date: 01 September 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

The Journal of Environment &

Development

2023, Vol. 32(3) 274–301

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/10704965231190128

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Are Poverty Alleviation

and Carbon Reduction

Parallel Paths? Empirical

Research on the

Interaction Between

Poverty Alleviation and

Carbon Emissions

Li Haoyan

1,2

, Hui Jiang

2

, and

Wu Zhongqi

2

Abstract

Consolidating the results of poverty alleviation and achieving carbon neutrality are

serious challenges for global sustainable development, and it is essential to explore the

relationship between these goals, and then offer scientif‌ic responses. Based on the

panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2010 to 2019, this paper conducted the 2SLS

model by compromising the merits of the Regression Discontinuity principle with the

STIRPAT model to study the interaction between poverty alleviation and carbon

reduction. The study found that: (1) the implementation of poverty alleviation ag-

gravates the problem of carbon emissions, and the main mechanism is that poverty

alleviation promotes consumption and production by increasing the wealth of farmers,

thereby increasing carbon emissions. (2) Carbon reduction weakens the achievement

of poverty alleviation signif‌icantly, but the mitigation effect presents an “inverted U”-

shaped curve, which f‌irst increases and then wanes. (3) Farmers’income and the

development of rural transportation play a role in acting on the negative effects of

carbon reduction. By integrating poverty theory and energy management, this article

1

School of Economics and Management, University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

2

School of Engineering Science, University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

Corresponding Author:

Hui Jiang, Professor, School of Engineering Science, Univ. of Chinese Academy of Sciences, No.19 Yuquan

Road, Shijingshan District, Beijing 100049, China.

Email: huijiang@ucas.ac.cn.

Data Availability Statement included at the end of the article.

reveals the complex relationship between two important policies in China and offers

relevant policy recommendations, which will not only promote the advancement of

rural revitalization but also promote global sustainable development.

Keywords

poverty alleviation, rural vitalization, carbon reduction, green technology

Introduction

In September 2015, the United Nations adopted the 2015–2030 Agenda for Sustainable

Development with 17 Sustainable Development Goals as the core, on the basis of the

Millennium Development Goals, among which poverty eradication and carbon re-

duction are included. Regardless of whether the realization of the two goals leads to the

advancement of both, conf‌licts with each other, or there exist other mechanisms of

action, it is worth studying the relationship between these goals and offer scientif‌ic

responses. The present article aims to do the same.

The eradication of poverty has always been of great concern to governments around

the world and continues to be the primary goal for many. In the last few decades,

China’s achievements regarding poverty alleviation have attracted worldwide attention.

According to the World Bank’s international poverty standard of $1.9 per person per

day, more than 800 million poor people in China have been lifted out of poverty,

accounting for about two-thirds of the world’s poverty-reduced population, as well as

the maximum contribution to global poverty reduction (Chen et al., 2010). However,

with the decrease in the poor population, it is more diff‌icult to diminish poverty for the

remaining poor population, and poverty alleviation has entered the deep-water area (Li,

2018). At the end of 2013, General Secretary Xi Jinping pioneered “targeted poverty

alleviation.”Taking this idea as the fundamental guideline, after a period of practical

exploration and research, the battle for poverty alleviation was fully launched at the end

of 2015. Following that, for consolidating the achievements of poverty alleviation and

promoting “livability”and “prosperity”of rural society in the meantime, in 2017, the

19th Communist Party of China National Congress proposed to implement rural vi-

talization, a strategy that aims to abandon high-carbon agriculture, explore low-carbon

mechanisms, and expand the path of low-carbon development of “agriculture, rural

areas, and rural people,”guided by environmental friendliness and the sustainable use

of resources.

Since the launch of poverty alleviation, rural areas in China have seen world-

renowned achievements, for instance, the total output of agriculture, forestry, f‌ishery,

and animal husbandry rose from 2617.96 billion yuan to 11,465.31 billion yuan from

2001 to 2017, with an average annual growth rate of 9.1%. Rural economic growth has

effectively improved the quality of farmers’living standards and elevated the country’s

global standing, while also generating a large amount of carbon emissions. Relevant

studies have shown that rural areas are growing into the second-largest source of

Haoyan et al. 275