Effects of Policy Intervention on Food System Resilience to Emergency Risk Shock: Experience from China during COVID-19 Pandemic.

Achieving the goal of zero hunger within the goal of sustainable development requires improving the resilience of food systems to various types of risk shocks; food systems have shown significant vulnerability to COVID-19 outbreaks and transmission. By analyzing the impact of China's lockdown policy and food security emergency policy in 2020 on food prices during the COVID-19 pandemic, we can clarify the role of policy intervention in enhancing the resilience of the food system, which can provide guidance, using China's experience, for dealing with global food safety emergencies in the future. Firstly, we selected Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong as food-consuming areas, and Shandong, Henan, and Hubei as food-producing areas. We also collected food security emergency policy data from the Chinese government website during the COVID-19 pandemic. Secondly, a difference-in-difference method was used to observe that Chinese cabbage and pork prices in the main food-producing areas and food-consuming areas rose more obviously after the adoption of lockdown policy, and Chinese cabbage and pork prices in the food-consuming areas increased more obviously than those in food-producing areas. However, staple food prices have not risen significantly. Thirdly, the response of four kinds of food prices to the food security emergency policy is analyzed quantitatively and graphically using the food price volatility index and food price increase rate; we observed that the response of food prices to the food security emergency policy is related to the food types and regions. For food types, the fluctuation degree and increase in Chinese cabbage and pork prices decreased significantly after the adoption of the food security emergency policy. For regions, when the food security emergency policy was adopted, the food prices in the main food-consuming areas fluctuated more obviously than those in food-producing areas. Finally, we found that the implementation of the transport policy and the joint supply emergency policy in the main producing and consuming areas has played a very significant and positive role in stabilizing food prices.

Discussion of an environmental depletion assessment method-A case study in Xinjiang, China.

Environmental process assessment based on the environmental depletion index (EDI) is an important part of the long-term monitoring and early warning mechanism of China's resources and environmental carrying capacity. The EDI aims to realize the unified environmental impact assessment of economic and environmental systems through the ratio relationship between economic growth and pollutant emission growth. However, in terms of pollutant emissions, the EDI ignores the environmental capacity (EC), which means that the effectiveness and objectivity of environmental impact assessment must be verified. In this study, with Xinjiang as an example and based on the EDI, Sulfur dioxide (SO2), Nitrogen oxide (NOx), Chemical oxygen demand (COD) and Ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N) were selected for calculation and assessment both without and with consideration of EC and for discussion of the suitability of the environmental depletion method for resources and environmental carrying capacity. The results indicated that ① the percentages of SO2, NOx, COD, NH3-N and CEDI in counties and cities that tend to be poor and lack EC were 32.98%, 29.79%, 30.85%, 28.72% and 38.30%, respectively, while the percentages in counties and cities with EC were 10.64%, 3.19%, 13.83%, 8.51% and 10.64%, respectively. ② When EC was included, the number of counties and cities where changes in SO2, NOx, COD, NH3-N and CEDI tended to be "poor → good" were 23, 26, 17, 21 and 28, respectively, and the number of counties and cities where such changes tended to be "good → poor" were 2, 1, 1, 2 and 2, respectively. ③ EC inclusion corrected overestimated or underestimated EDI results, making the evaluation results more objective and reasonable. This understanding provides a scientific reference for the coordinated development of the regional economy and environment in Xinjiang and worldwide.

Identification of key industries of industrial sector with energy-related CO2 emissions and analysis of their potential for energy conservation and emission reduction in Xinjiang, China.

As the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter, China bears an arduous task of energy conservation (EC) and emission reduction (ER). CO2 arising from energy consumption during industrial processes makes up the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions in China. It is the key for the Chinese government to achieve its goal of emission reduction in 2030 by identifying key industries with CO2 emissions and probing into their potential for EC&ER. We used Xinjiang Province of China as a research area. Next, we proposed a method for identifying key industries with CO2 emissions in Xinjiang's industrial sector and analyzed their energy consumption and CO2 emission characteristics. Finally, the average energy efficiency index of national industries was used to explore the potential for EC&ER of key industries. Results indicated that (1) the CO2 emissions in industrial sector were 463.35 million tons in 2016, making up 90.72% of its total CO2 emissions from energy consumption, considerably higher than the global and national averages; (2) In 2016, the 8 key industries with energy-related CO2 emissions determined in this study are all heavy industries whose energy consumption and CO2 emissions were 119.65 million tce (tons carbon equivalent) and 445.36 million tons respectively, taken up 62.51% and 87.2% of the total amount in Xinjiang. These 8 key industries play a critical role in realizing EC&ER in Xinjiang; (3) In 2016, the eight key industries had the potential to save 74.65 million tce, accounted for 45.79% of the total EC. Their potential for ER were 272.07 million tons of CO2, equal to 53.27% of the total CO2 emissions. On this basis, it is recommended that the local government exploit the potential of key industries for EC&ER by improving their energy efficiency.

Decomposition of factors affecting changes in non-CO2 greenhouse gas emission intensity of China's livestock sector based on the concept of "environment-food-economy".

The livestock sector is the main source of non-CO2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in China. Decomposing the factors that influence non-CO2 GHG intensity in the livestock sector (LGI) serves as an important reference for the development of specific emission reduction policies. However, the difficulty lies in how to consider the relationship between emission reductions and the human food supply and economic development. In this study, a decomposition framework for the LGI in China was constructed from the concept of "environment-food-economy." The influencing factors that drove changes in LGI were interpreted at the environmental level, economic level, and scale level. Additionally, the logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) method was used to quantify the contributions of these three drivers in 31 provinces across China from 1998 to 2016. The results showed that: (1) the LGI of China decreased by 80.02% during the study period. This decrease was mainly driven by the environmental and economic level factors of each province with a respective cumulative contribution of 51.96% and 34.10%. However, the scale-level factor of each province cumulatively suppressed the LGI drop by 6.04% in China. (2) For the contribution of the environmental-level factor, the top five provinces were Henan, Yunnan, Inner Mongolia, Guangxi, and Shandong. The top five provinces for the economic-level factor contribution were Henan, Sichuan, Shandong, Hebei, and Heilongjiang. (3) Under the concept of the livestock sector "environment-food-economy", improving the environmental and economic levels of the livestock sector in each province, and narrowing its inter-provincial gaps are two feasible ways that can be used to reduce China's LGI. Our research methodology is applicable to studies on the reduction of LGI in regions of different scales.

Changes in agricultural carbon emissions and factors that influence agricultural carbon emissions based on different stages in Xinjiang, China.

Xinjiang's agricultural carbon emissions showed three stages of change, i.e., continued to rise, declined and continued to rise, during 1991-2014. The agriculture belonged to the "low emissions and high efficiency" agriculture category, with a lower agricultural carbon emission intensity. By using the logarithmic mean divisia index decomposition method, agricultural carbon emissions were decomposed into an efficiency factor, a structure factor, an economy factor, and a labour factor. We divided the study period into five stages based on the changes in efficiency factor and economy factor. Xinjiang showed different agricultural carbon emission characteristics at different stages. The degree of impact on agricultural carbon emissions at these stages depended on the combined effect of planting-animal husbandry carbon intensity and agricultural labour productivity. The economy factor was the critical factor to promote the increase in agricultural carbon emissions, while the main inhibiting factor for agricultural carbon emissions was the efficiency factor. The labour factor became more and more obvious in increasing agricultural carbon emissions. Finally, we discuss policy recommendations in terms of the main factors, including the development of agricultural science and technology (S&T), the establishment of three major mechanisms and transfer of rural labour in ethnic areas.