CARBON EMISSION EFFECTS OF LAND USE CHANGE AND PLANNING - A CASE STUDY FOR HONG KONG

Abstract

As a key component of sustainable city development, sustainable land use and management has been playing an essential role in mitigating climate change through the interactions between land-use change and carbon cycle. However, the process of land cover and land use change is dynamic, so is the land use planning, which affects the carbon storage and emission. This paper therefore studied the carbon emission effects of land use change and planning through the application of correlation analysis and eco-economic decoupling concept to the case of Hong Kong. Carbon accounting indicates that the built-up land has been contributing most to the total carbon emissions, and carbon sequestration in woodlands has been improved as land area is increasing. To further examine the effects of built-up land on carbon emissions, a fuel consumption-based approach was taken to estimate the carbon emissions from various land uses. The result shows that there exists a strong positive correlation between residential and commercial land use change and the associated carbon emissions. But a direct correlation is not evident in industrial and transport sector. Nonetheless, building and transport sector remains the largest emission contributor. Meanwhile, there is a relative decoupling relation between GDP growth per unit of area and carbon emissions, implying a decline in ecological intensity per unit of economic output. The analysis shows that an absolute decoupling would be possible if enhanced low carbon strategies are adopted to cut down energy consumption from the major carbon sources, notably in the building sector, to improve rail transit travels and promote eco-mobility, and to advance the conservation and management of carbon sinks.