Agricultural land use is an important source of CO₂ emissions. Therefore, taking the CO₂ emissions of China’s agricultural land use during 1995–2020 as a case, we firstly calculated its composition and analyzed the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics. Then, the Tapio decoupling model and logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) were, respectively, used to identify the decoupling relationship between the CO₂ emission change and economic growth, and analyze the driving factors for CO₂ emissions. (1) The CO₂ emissions of China’s agricultural land use were composed of two main phases (fluctuating growth phase (1995–2015) and rapid decline phase (2016–2020)). The total CO₂ emissions exhibited a non-equilibrium spatial distribution. The inter-provincial CO₂ emissions differences first expanded and then shrank, but the inter-provincial differences of CO₂ emissions intensity continuously decreased. (2) The total CO₂ emissions of China’s agricultural land use increased from 50.443 Mt in 1995 to 79.187 Mt in 2020, with an average annual growth rate of 1.82%. Fertilizer, agricultural diesel and agricultural (plastic) film were the main sources of anthropogenic agricultural-land-use CO₂ emissions. Controlling the use of fertilizer and agricultural diesel and improving the utilization efficiency of agricultural (plastic) film could be an effective way to reduce CO₂ emissions. (3) The Tapio decoupling relationship between the CO₂ emission change and economic growth was a weak decoupling state during 1995–2015 and a strong decoupling state during 2016–2020. This result indicates that China’s agricultural land use can be effectively controlled. (4) The agricultural economic level is the decisive factor in promoting CO₂ emissions increase, and its cumulative contribution was 476.09%. Inversely, the CO₂ emission intensity, agricultural structure and agricultural labor force were three key factors, with cumulative contributions of −189.51%, −16.86% and −169.72%, respectively. Collectively, based on the findings obtained from the present research, we have proposed some suggestions to promote the sustainable use of agriculture lands in China.

Renewable energy consumption (REC) has an important significance in mitigating CO₂ emissions. However, currently, few scientists have analyzed the underlying impact of REC from a global geographic perspective. Thus, here, we divide the world into seven regions to study this impact during the period 1971–2016 using the logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI). These regions were East Asia and the Pacific (EAP), Europe and Central Asia (ECA), Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), Middle East and North Africa (MENA), North America (NA), South Asia (SA), and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The results showed that ECA had the most obviously mitigating effect of −10.13%, followed by NA and MENA (−3.91% and −3.87%, respectively). Inversely, EAP had the largest driving effect of 4.12%, followed by SA (3.43%) and the others. Globally, REC had an overall mitigating contribution of −11.04% to total CO₂ change. These results indicate that it is still important to exploit and utilize renewable energy, especially in presently developing or underdeveloped countries. Moreover, for some countries at a certain stage, their REC effects were negative, but, concurrently, their energy intensity effects were positive. These results show that some developing countries recently reduced carbon emissions only by extensively using renewable energy, not by enhancing energy-use efficiency. Finally, some policy implications for reducing CO₂ in different countries are recommended.

Resilience is a new path to express and enhance urban sustainability. Cities suffer from natural shocks and human-made disturbances due to rapid urbanization and global climate change. The construction of an urban resilient developmental environment is restricted by these factors. Strengthening the comprehensive evaluation of resilience is conducive to identifying high-risk areas in cities, guiding regional risk prevention, and providing a scientific basis for differentiated strategies for urban resilience governance. For this study, taking Shenyang city as a case study, the resilience index system was constructed as an ECP (“exposure”, “connectedness”, and “potential”) framework, and the adaptive cycle model was introduced into the resilience assessment framework. This model not only comprehensively considers the relationship between exposure and potential but also helps to focus on the temporal and spatial dynamics of urban resilience. The results show that the exposed indicators have experienced three spatial evolution stages, including single-center circle expansion, multicenter clustering, and multicenter expansion. The potential index increased radially from the downtown area to the outer suburbs, and the low-value area presented a multicenter pattern. The spatial agglomeration of connectivity indicators gradually weakened. The results reflect the fact that the resilience level of the downtown area has been improved and the resilience of the outer expansion area has declined due to urban construction. The multicenter cluster pattern is conducive to the balance of resilience levels. In terms of the adaptive cycle phases of urban resilience, the first ring has gone through three phases: exploitation (r), conservation (K), and release (Ω). The second and third rings have gradually shifted from the exploitation (r) phase to the conservation (K) phase. The fourth ring has entered the exploitation (r) phase from the reorganization (ɑ) phase. The fifth ring and its surrounding areas are in the reorganization (ɑ) phase. The results provide specific spatial guidance for implementing resilient urban planning and realizing sustainable urban development.

Currently, household carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions (HCEs) as one of the leading sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) have drawn notable scholarly concern. Thus, here, taking six provinces in the period of 2000–2017 of Central China as a case, we analyzed the characteristics and the driving factors of HCEs from direct energy consumption and three perspectives: Central China as a whole, urban-rural differences, and inter-provincial comparison. The drivers of direct HCEs were analyzed by the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI). The σ convergence was adopted for analyzing the trend of inter-provincial differences on the HCEs. The key findings are as follows. First, all the direct HCEs from three perspectives had an obvious growth trend. The total direct HCEs grew from 9596.20 × 10⁴ tonnes in 2000 to 30,318.35 × 10⁴ tonnes in 2017, with an increase of 2.16 times. Electricity and coal use were the primary sources. The urban and rural increases of direct HCEs were up 2.57 times and 1.77 times, respectively. The urban-rural gap of direct HCEs narrowed first and then widened. The direct HCEs in the six provinces varied significantly, but the gap was narrowing. Second, as a whole the per capita consumption expenditure and energy demand were the main drivers to the increment of HCEs, with cumulative contribution rates of 118.19% and 59.90%. The energy price effect was mainly responsible for the mitigation of HCEs. Third, the similar drivers’ trend can also be seen from the perspective of inter-provincial comparison. However, from the perspective of urban and rural difference, the population urban-rural structure effect played a reverse influence on both urban and rural areas. Thus, raising the energy prices appropriately, upgrading the residents’ consumption to a sustainable pattern, controlling the growth of population size reasonably, and optimizing the household energy structure might effectively mitigate the growth of HCEs in Central China.

Eco-efficiency, as one of the evaluation tools for sustainable development performance, has been a widely discussed topic in academia for the past several decades. However, the existing research on eco-efficiency is rather homogeneous. Most of it is based on the construction of a system of indicators that includes ecological constraints to evaluate its overall eco-efficiency, but it treats the eco-economic system as a ‘black box’, ignoring the fact that it is actually composed of several sub-systems. In this paper, based on a two-stage resource-environment system perspective, we construct a Super-NEBM model considering undesirable outputs to measure urban ecological efficiency; a spatial Durbin model is then used to analyse its influencing factors. The results indicate that (1) China’s urban eco-efficiency levels are fluctuating, with a decreasing “east-central/northeast-west” trend. (2) The spatial heterogeneity of ecological efficiency levels in Chinese cities is obvious, with significant spatial agglomeration effects. (3) There are positive spatial spillover effects on the ecological efficiency of Chinese cities; economic development, industrial structure, financial development, population density, innovation capacity, infrastructure, marketisation and informatisation all have important direct effects on urban ecological efficiency; in addition, economic development, financial development, population density, marketisation, informatisation and foreign investment all have significant indirect effects of varying degrees.

How fishermen produce and live has been a hot topic of academic concern in recent years. However, existing research has focused excessively on marine fishermen. Inland fisheries make a significant but often overlooked contribution to rural livelihoods in developing countries. In this paper, we constructed a framework for fishermen’s livelihood strategies and used questionnaires and in-depth interviews to study 275 households of inland fishermen in a professional fishing village at Poyang Lake. The results show that (1) the impact of the comprehensive fishing ban has led to significant changes in the livelihood capital of inland fishermen, leading to fishermen being forced to change their livelihood strategies. (2) The current livelihood strategies can be divided into four categories, which are non-fishing employment, self-employment, public welfare positions and retirement respectively. (3) Livelihood capital such as age, education, social interaction and fishing rights influence their choice of livelihood strategies. (4) The fishing ban proposal generally meets the interests of fishermen, but there is some capacity for improvement in terms of implementation details and policy flexibility. Based on these findings, we recommend that the government conducts further in-depth research and adjusts and improves its policy options in good time. To the satisfaction of all parties, the current policy protects the environment and achieves sustainable human development, making Chinese contributions and proposing Chinese plans to address global environmental change.