COP26: Progress, Challenges, and Outlook.

The 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was held in Glasgow a year later than scheduled, with expected outcomes achieved under a post-pandemic background. Based on the Issue-Actor-Mechanism Framework, this paper systematically evaluates the outcomes achieved at COP26 and analyzes the tendency of post-COP26 climate negotiations. Overall, with the concerted efforts of all parties, COP26 has achieved a balanced and inclusive package of outcomes and concluded six years of negotiations on the Paris Rulebook. It is fair to say that COP26 is another milestone in climate governance following the implementation of the Paris Agreement. Meanwhile, the Glasgow Climate Pact has cemented the consensus on a global commitment to accelerating climate action over the next decade and reached a breakthrough consensus on reducing coal, controlling methane, and halting deforestation. In the post-COP26 era, we still need to take concrete actions to implement the outcomes of the Paris Agreement and the Glasgow Climate Pact, innovate ways to speed up CO2 emissions reduction, and continue to strive for breakthroughs in important issues such as finance, technology, adaptation, and collaboration. In addition to avoiding the escalation of international conflicts, we need to collectively and properly handle the relationship between energy security, carbon reduction, and development and facilitate the efforts of countries to achieve their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including climate-related goals. China will continue to maintain the existing multilateral mechanisms and processes for climate governance, unremittingly take concrete actions to address climate change, promote a domestic comprehensive green transition and global cooperation on carbon neutrality, and contribute constructively to global climate governance.

The impact of climate aid on carbon emissions reduction and the role of renewable energy: evidence from the Belt and Road countries.

Full mobilization and effective use of climate aid is of great importance for the low carbon transition of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries. This study utilizes the two-step system generalized method of moments model to evaluate the effects of climate aid on carbon emissions reduction and the impact mechanism through energy structure optimization. The panel data of 93 Belt and Road countries from 2000 to 2018 were used for empirical analysis. Results show that climate aid has a significant reduction effect on the carbon emissions intensity of BRI countries, and the dominant component of climate aid, i.e., mitigation aid, corresponds to better carbon emissions reduction benefits than adaptation aid. The impact mechanism demonstrates that the climate aid has dual carbon emissions reduction effects in BRI countries which have an intermediate energy structure. It indicates that climate aid not only directly reduces carbon emissions by increasing carbon reduction resources, but also indirectly reduces carbon emissions by promoting renewable energy and optimizing the energy structure. The results evidence the theory of environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis and channels of climate aid effects. Practical implications from the current study include that more climate finance support should be provided to BRI countries by developed countries, the effectiveness of climate aid should be improved by investing in projects with significant carbon reduction like renewable energy, data monitoring and performance evaluation of climate aid should be strengthened, and China should take its role and make more contributions to the low carbon transition especially energy transition of BRI countries.

Allocation of provincial carbon emission allowances under China's 2030 carbon peak target: A dynamic multi-criteria decision analysis method.

To balance China's socio-economic development and emission reduction goals, a fair and effective provincial carbon emission allowance (CEA) allocation is necessary. By considering the implied emissions of inter-provincial power transfer, this study designed a dynamic multi-criteria CEA allocation model based on four criteria-egalitarianism, historical responsibility, emission reduction capability, and emission efficiency-to calculate the provincial CEA year by year before 2030. The efficiency and fairness of the CEA scheme were evaluated through the Data envelopment analysis (DEA) model, the environmental Gini coefficient, and its grouped decomposition method. The national overall CEA, the results revealed, will peak during the 15th Five-Year Plan (FYP) period. Specifically, the CEA for eastern and central China is expected to peak first during the 14th FYP period, while the northeast region's CEA remains stable and that of the western region continues to grow. Provinces with high carbon emissions, high carbon emission intensity and high per capita carbon emissions and provinces with particularly high carbon emissions will face great pressure regarding emission reduction, and their CEA peaks are expected to arrive before 2025 and 2030 respectively. The CEA of the less-developed provinces will have a surplus. In terms of time, the high-emission provinces face greater emission reduction pressure during the 15th FYP period than during the 14th FYP period. In terms of scheme evaluation, the scheme achieved a double improvement in fairness and efficiency compared with the current actual emissions of various provinces. Reducing the differences in per capita CEA between the different regions and provinces in the western and eastern regions will help improve the scheme's fairness. This study overcomes the existing researches' shortcomings on the large differences in the distribution of emission reduction pressures in key provinces and is more feasible in practice.

Research on the national climate governance system toward carbon neutrality-A critical literature review.

Global climate governance has entered the era of carbon neutrality, as a growing number of countries have set the goal of carbon neutrality for long-term emissions reduction toward the mid-21st century. In 2020, China also pledged itself to the goal of carbon neutrality, which creates an urgent demand for this country to establish a systematic and integrated national climate governance system. Against this background, this paper conducts a systematic literature review of climate governance systems from the perspectives of top-level design and the governance paradigm to bring insights into climate governance toward carbon neutrality. The results show that although there are interactions between decarbonization and other environmental, social and economic fields, research gaps still exist when enhancing climate governance toward carbon neutrality. For example, issues regarding incorporating climate factors into the overall economic and social layout, strengthening the capacity of data collection relevant to climate adaptation, integrating climate mitigation and adaption actions, as well as connecting domestic climate governance and international cooperation, need to be further addressed. In addition, within the national governance system, studies combining both regional and sectoral concerns and the intertemporal dynamic allocation mechanism need to be further addressed when China decomposes its national climate target. Moreover, the division of power between the central government and local government, as well as the communication scheme between government and non-state actors, also turns out to be important for effective governance. Based on this analysis, policy implications are further proposed for China's formulation and implementation of long-term strategies of climate governance toward carbon neutrality.