![]() Fixed deadlines have helped to focus national effort. These two goals have captured the Chinese nation’s imagination, galvanized carbon neutrality research efforts, and generated action plans tailored to the specific context of all regions and sectors. In September 2020, China pledged to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, a progression from its present emission levels through a carbon emission peak in 2030 to carbon neutrality in 2060. At the same time, climate change is widespread, rapid, and intensifying, already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the world, as identified in the recently released Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2021 IPCC 2022). This +1.5 ☌ cap is a level projected to significantly mitigate, albeit still with increased climate-related risks to health, livelihood, food security, water supply, human security, and economic growth (IPCC 2018). ![]() While progress is being made with new declarations and higher ambitions, research suggests that even if all net-zero commitments and national climate pledges were fulfilled, warming would not be held to 1.5 ☌ above preindustrial levels. Achieving global net-zero emissions around the midcentury, which is required to cap global warming at 1.5 ☌ above preindustrial levels as called for in the 2015 Paris Agreement, was a central topic at the Glasgow UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), the latest in the series of Conference of the Parties Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that began in 1992. The article also calls for strengthening CER research and summarizes key measures for carbon emission risk governance.Ĭlimate change due to a growing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is a challenge for all of humanity, which has entered a “climate emergency” stage that requires urgent action. Based on our calculation, CER at the provincial level in eastern China is higher than in western China. Thus, the ratio of CE to CA is a measure of reality at any moment of time, whereas Cv indicates the overall propensity or capacity for moving the CE/CA ratio towards 1, that is, realizing carbon neutrality. These variables are modified by a broadly defined “vulnerability coefficient” (Cv) that embodies both the potential for changes (decreasing CE and increasing CA), and the uncertainties of measuring CE and CA. The “risks” of missing (or achieving) the carbon neutrality target for any region at any time, the article argues, is essentially determined by the ratio of CE to carbon absorption (CA, for uptake and removal). Carbon emissions (CE) as hazard, combined with the human socioeconomic system as exposure and human living environment, constitute the regional carbon emission environmental risk system. This article examines the “risks” of missing the carbon neutrality goal at a regional scale in China, denoted as Carbon Emission Risk (CER). How to ensure that the transition pathways are on track and well-contextualized is one of the crucial challenges for policymakers and practitioners. Since China’s pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, the “dual carbon” goals of carbon emission peaking and neutrality have stimulated nationwide attention, research, and policies and action plans. Applying hazard and disaster risk research perspectives to seek new insights on integrated mitigation and adaptation approaches and policy measures is equally elusive. Within the hazard and disaster risk research field, explicitly treating carbon emissions as a hazard remains rather nascent.
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