Low-carbon development policies and achievements in the context of the livestock sector in China

Highlights

● The main impediments to low-carbon development of livestock sector are recognized.

● The divergence between the existing policies and actual practices are explained.

● Policy should focus on establishing standards, database and monitoring network.

Abstract

Rapid growth and a vast transition of Chinese livestock industry driven by economic incentives make it become an important contributor on climate change over the last four decades. This study first analyzes the evolving low-carbon livestock development policies and regulations, then an assessment and explanations of the achievements and non-achievements are provided. The findings reveal that China began to pay attention to low-carbon development policy starting in the early 1990s. However, only after the cyclic and green concept became the main sustainable development policy, China began to move seriously toward low-carbon livestock development. Several policy instruments were introduced, including moderate scale, feed optimization, manure resource utilization, facility and equipment allocation rate, energy conservation and substitution. Overall, achievements were made in introducing such policies. However, due to the large share of standard agriculture and regional resources, and environmental diversity, such policies may have little effect in practice. The divergence between the policies and actual practices are explained, and important policies applicable to all developing countries are also recommended.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Low carbon livestock development / policy recommendations / divergence / carbon market

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Acknowledgements

This study was sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42201329), the Key Project of the Establishment of National Dairy Technology Innovation Center (2021-National Dairy Innovation Center-2), the Central Public-Interest Scientific Institution Basic Research Fund (BSRF202104), and the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Sha Wei, Junming Fan, Yanfeng Tian, and Hongmin Dong declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2024. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)