Emissions required to close the decent living gaps in Chinese city clusters

Yuezhang HongMo Li^*

• The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China

Effective demand-side mitigation requires shifting from growth-driven to sufficiency-driven consumption. Decent living standards (DLS) are such indicators that offer a practical basis for achieving distributive justice in demand-side mitigation policy. It has gained momentum on its conceptual advances in addressing carbon inequality and promoting social justice. In China, DLS remain deprived in hinterland cities and are excessively met in central cities. By translating DLS into city-level context-specific scenarios, this study assessed the avoided emissions that would have to be emitted from 2017 to 2050 under two DLS scenarios. We found that leveraging DLS for all does not lead to an increase in national carbon emissions. A novel indicator of DLS deprivation, decent living gap (DLG), was propose to address city level inequalities and redistributions among city clusters. Central cities need to contribute 33% towards closing national DLG, with higher end reaching 69%. For high-income city clusters, 86% of their DLG is expected to be imported from lower-income city clusters. This DLG import will significantly lessen the mitigation burden of less developed regions.Our study provides valuable insights into an equitable demand-side mitigation pathways that ensure DLS for all.