Has Chinese Certified Emission Reduction trading reduced rural poverty in China?

Abstract

Consolidating and expanding poverty alleviation while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions has become one of the main issues facing China. The Chinese Certified Emission Reduction (CCER) trading programme is an important supplementary mechanism to China's carbon trading market. Based on the data of 1782 counties in China from 2006 to 2017 and a difference-in-differences model, this study investigates the rural poverty reduction effect of CCER trading. We find that: (1) during the sample period, CCER trading has increased the per capita net income of rural residents by at least 2.5% or 187.5 RMB (about 27.8 USD or 39.3 AUD) per year. (2) The poverty reduction effect of CCER trading in poor counties is greater than that in nonpoor counties. (3) Some relevant heterogeneous effects are also measured. We find that CCER trading of hydropower projects has played a significant poverty reduction effect; the poverty reduction effect is further enhanced when the county has additional CCER projects; we also identify regional differences with CCER trading having a greater poverty reduction effect in the western and central regions. (4) Compared with the implementation of the CCER project, trading the emission reductions generated by the CCER project has brought more significant poverty reduction effects.