Carbon and Water Footprints of Tibet: Spatial Pattern and Trend Analysis

Wu Xie, Shuai Hu, Fangyi Li, Xin Cao and Zhipeng Tang
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Wu Xie: School of Management, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei 230009, China
Shuai Hu: School of Management, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei 230009, China
Fangyi Li: School of Management, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei 230009, China
Xin Cao: School of Management, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei 230009, China
Zhipeng Tang: Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 8, 1-15

Abstract: Tibet in China has extremely a fragile natural ecosystem, which is under a great pressure from global changes. The carbon footprint (CF) and water footprint (WF), reflecting the pressures of regional development on the natural environment, represent a lacuna in the field of study in Tibet due to missing data. In this paper, the 2012 multi-regional input–output table of China was employed to quantify the CF and WF of Tibet and the relationship between Tibet and other provinces of China. Spatial pattern and key sectors were also studied to demonstrate the current characters and the future trend of footprints. Tibet’s carbon emission was 4.0 Mt, 32.7% of CF, indicating that Tibet was a net importing region of carbon emission. Tibet received embodied carbon emission by trade from other regions, especially from Hebei, Inner Mongolia and Henan provinces, but played a complex role in virtual water allocation by transferring to most provinces and receiving from some provinces. The CF of Tibet will increase under different scenarios of 2030, but the WF can be restricted to 2.5 Gt in the slow scenario. In the future, imports of virtual resources will benefit the fragile ecosystem of Tibet and moreover, it is vital to restrict the local resource-intensive sectors and improve resource-use efficiency.

Keywords: carbon footprint; water footprint; multi-regional input–output model; Tibet; environmental impact (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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