Abstract
Exploring carbon emission effects based on the evolution of residents’ dietary structure to achieve the carbon neutrality goal and mitigate climate change is an important task. This study took China as the research object (data excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) and used the carbon emission coefficient method to quantitatively measure the food carbon emissions from 1987–2020, then analyzed the carbon emission effects under the evolution of dietary structure. The results showed that during the study period, the Chinese dietary structure gradually changed to a high-carbon consumption pattern. The dietary structure of urban residents developed to a balanced one, while that of rural residents developed to a high-quality one. During the study period, the per capita food carbon emissions and total food consumption of Chinese showed an increasing trend. The per capita food carbon emissions of residents in urban and rural showed an overall upward trend. The total food carbon emissions in urban increased significantly, while that in rural increased first and then decreased. The influence of beef and mutton on carbon emissions is the highest in dietary structure. Compared with the balanced dietary pattern, the food carbon emissions of Chinese residents had not yet reached the peak, but were evolving to a high-carbon consumption pattern.
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ZHU Yuanyuan: conceptualization, writing-review and editing; ZHANG Yan: methodology, formal analysis and investigation, and writing-original draft preparation; ZHU Xiaohua: funding acquisition, writing-review and supervision.
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Foundation item: Under the auspices of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 42171230)
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Zhu, Y., Zhang, Y. & Zhu, X. Carbon Emission Effects Driven by Evolution of Chinese Dietary Structure from 1987 to 2020. Chin. Geogr. Sci. 34, 181–194 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11769-023-1374-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11769-023-1374-9