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Urban and rural dual structure in Western China is obvious. The economic development of the central cities is relatively quick while that of the rural areas is lagging behind. The speeding up of urbanization contributes to the intensively uncoordinated development of urban and rural areas. Besides, the eco-fragile environment, shortage of available water resources, adverse geographic location, and relatively backward social economy restrict the development of urbanization in Western China. However, Western China also has the advantages of backwardness. This paper analyzes the present situation and development trend of urbanization in Western China. The results show that Western China has basically formed a development pattern with “industry promotes agriculture and urban leads to village”. Therefore, combined with the present situation of Western China, this paper describes and analyzes the opportunities and challenges that may appear in the process of urbanization in Western China, puts forward the devel...

There are substantial differences in carbon footprints across households. This study applied an environmentally extended multiregional input–output approach to estimate household carbon footprints for 12 different income groups of China’s 30 regions. Subsequently, carbon footprint Gini coefficients were calculated to measure carbon inequality for households across provinces. We found that the top 5% of income earners were responsible for 17% of the national household carbon footprint in 2012, while the bottom half of income earners caused only 25%. Carbon inequality declined with economic growth in China across space and time in two ways: first, carbon footprints showed greater convergence in the wealthier coastal regions than in the poorer inland regions; second, China’s national carbon footprint Gini coefficients declined from 0.44 in 2007 to 0.37 in 2012. We argue that economic growth not only increases income levels but also contributes to an overall reduction in carbon inequality in China.

Abstract Millions of tonnes (teragrams) of plastic waste are traded around the world every year, which plays an important role in partially substituting virgin plastics as a source of raw materials in plastic product manufacturing. In this paper, global plastic waste trade networks (GPWTNs) from 1988 to 2017 are established using the UN-Comtrade database. The spatiotemporal evolution of the GPWTNs is analyzed. Attention is given to the country ranks, inter- and intra-continental trade flows, and geo-visual communities in the GPWTNs. We also evaluate the direct and indirect impacts of China’s plastic waste import ban on the GPWTNs. The results show that the GPWTNs have small-world and scale-free properties and a core-periphery structure. The geography of the plastic waste trade is structured by Asia as the dominant importer and North America and Europe as the largest sources of plastic waste. China is the unrivaled colossus in the global plastic waste trade. After China’s import ban, the plastic waste trade flows have been largely redirected to Southeast Asian countries. Compared with import countries, export countries are more important for the robustness of GPWTNs. Clearly, developed countries will not announce bans on plastic waste exports; these countries have strong motivation to continue to shift plastic waste to poorer countries. However, the import bans from developing countries will compel developed countries to build new disposal facilities and deal with their plastic waste domestically.

Land use is central to addressing sustainability issues, including biodiversity conservation, climate change, food security, poverty alleviation, and sustainable energy. In this paper, we synthesize knowledge accumulated in land system science, the integrated study of terrestrial social-ecological systems, into 10 hard truths that have strong, general, empirical support. These facts help to explain the challenges of achieving sustainability in land use and thus also point toward solutions. The 10 facts are as follows: 1) Meanings and values of land are socially constructed and contested; 2) land systems exhibit complex behaviors with abrupt, hard-to-predict changes; 3) irreversible changes and path dependence are common features of land systems; 4) some land uses have a small footprint but very large impacts; 5) drivers and impacts of land-use change are globally interconnected and spill over to distant locations; 6) humanity lives on a used planet where all land provides benefits to societies; 7) land-use change usually entails trade-offs between different benefits—"win–wins" are thus rare; 8) land tenure and land-use claims are often unclear, overlapping, and contested; 9) the benefits and burdens from land are unequally distributed; and 10) land users have multiple, sometimes conflicting, ideas of what social and environmental justice entails. The facts have implications for governance, but do not provide fixed answers. Instead they constitute a set of core principles which can guide scientists, policy makers, and practitioners toward meeting sustainability challenges in land use.

Abstract The household energy mix has significant impacts on human health and climate, as it contributes greatly to many health- and climate-relevant air pollutants. Compared to the well-established urban energy statistical system, the rural household energy statistical system is incomplete and is often associated with high biases. Via a nationwide investigation, this study revealed high contributions to energy supply from coal and biomass fuels in the rural household energy sector, while electricity comprised ∼20%. Stacking (the use of multiple sources of energy) is significant, and the average number of energy types was 2.8 per household. Compared to 2012, the consumption of biomass and coals in 2017 decreased by 45% and 12%, respectively, while the gas consumption amount increased by 204%. Increased gas and decreased coal consumptions were mainly in cooking, while decreased biomass was in both cooking (41%) and heating (59%). The time-sharing fraction of electricity and gases (E&G) for daily cooking grew, reaching 69% in 2017, but for space heating, traditional solid fuels were still dominant, with the national average shared fraction of E&G being only 20%. The non-uniform spatial distribution and the non-linear increase in the fraction of E&G indicated challenges to achieving universal access to modern cooking energy by 2030, particularly in less-developed rural and mountainous areas. In some non-typical heating zones, the increased share of E&G for heating was significant and largely driven by income growth, but in typical heating zones, the time-sharing fraction was <5% and was not significantly increased, except in areas with policy intervention. The intervention policy not only led to dramatic increases in the clean energy fraction for heating but also accelerated the clean cooking transition. Higher income, higher education, younger age, less energy/stove stacking and smaller family size positively impacted the clean energy transition.

With the impacts of climate disruption becoming more evident there has been an increase in the uptake of climate change adaptation "toolkits" to assist local governments build community resilience and adapt to the impacts of climate change. There is increasing attention and call for practitioners to adopt proactive and participatory approaches to help in the adaptive response planning process. One such toolkit is the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCRN) Process (IAP). This is a simple but rigorous toolkit developed to help local governments in Asian cities build resilience to the impacts of climate change. This paper outlines the application of the toolkit to determine its versatility in the rural context and was trialled in the Himalayan rural enclave of Ramgad in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. Given the differences between urban and rural environments, the outcomes highlighted the need for further investigation and analysis into the process to ensure that the methodology truly reflects the nature of rural systems and their level of vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Overall, the toolkit proved to be a simple but versatile toolkit to assess the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of communities in rural Himalaya. Over 40 resilience intervention strategies were developed for the Ramgad enclave and these were prioritized according to their technical, political, social and economic feasibility.

Sustainable development is a scientific development requirement for economic, social, and ecological development and is particularly important for less developed areas to achieve high quality development. Among them, the traffic flow network is a key contributor to economic activity and an inclusive society, as well as influencing the regional ecology, and is an important way to reflect the connection and structure of cities and towns. Based on the literature related to sustainable development, the article takes the passenger traffic data of highways, railways, and aviation of Inner Mongolia in 2021 as the sample and applies the complex network analysis method to analyze the traffic flow network structure and refine the spatial development patterns. The results show that: (1) The highway network is manifested as the connection between the central urban areas and surrounding banner counties and the connection between the adjacent banner counties. The railroad flow is extended and expanded by the railway line with core cities as the development axis. The internal and external connections of Hohhot are the general form of aviation network. The less developed areas under traffic flow network show obvious pointing of core cities and important node towns. (2) Each traffic flow network has the tendency of scale-free and small-world properties. The influence of key town nodes in the traffic flow network is relatively limited. (3) The town connection patterns under the highway, railway, and air flow networks are “single-core and multi-point”, “axis-spoke”, and “hub-spoke”, respectively. The multiple traffic flows support the development framework of towns in less developed areas. This paper also proposes strategies for the regional transport and urban pattern with complementary advantages and high quality and sustainable development in less developed areas.