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As a leading scholar in the field of sustainable development research, Herman Daly developed original and unique thoughts on sustainable development that have had world-class impacts on the theories, indicators, and policies in this field. Based on the frame-work of ' Ends-Means,' Daly's thoughts on sustainable development focus on the Ultimate End (well-being improvement) and the Ulti-mate Means (natural capital). Daly advocated that to use natural capital to promote human well-being in a sustainable manner, the cur-rent growth economy has to be transformed into a steady-state economy. Because economic growth has biophysical properties and is re-stricted by many factors, such as the laws of thermodynamics and planetary boundaries, unlimited growth is impossible. When its marginal ecological and social costs begin to be larger than its economic benefits, economic growth would turn into uneconomic growth. In this sense, unlimited growth is undesirable. As an alternative to the growth economy, the steady-state economy advocates promoting hu-man well-being within ecological limits and demands that stocks of material wealth be used efficiently and equitably. The steady-state economy is one of the most effective ways of achieving sustainable development. Along the main line of transforming the growth economy into the steady-state economy, as required by sustainable development, this paper reviews Daly's main thoughts on sustainable development on the following topics: ' a new perspective of economic production,' ' unlimited growth is impossible,' ' unlimited growth is undesirable,' and ' the steady-state economy is compatible with sustainable development.' Based on this review, the paper points out that, Daly's thoughts on sustainable development provide theoretical support and ideological implications for China's high-quality development from a different perspective, and broaden the theoretical horizon of China's high-quality development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying the effects of expected economic growth targets and environmental constraint targets set by Chinese local governments at the beginning of the year on high-quality development can provide empirical evidence for optimizing expected target management, improving macro-control, and fulfilling governance efficiency in the new development stage to some extent. Therefore, based on the theory of economic growth accounting and the stochastic frontier model, this paper calculated the level of high-quality development at the urban level, extracted the economic growth targets and environmental constraint targets from the Report on the Work of the Government with text analysis, constructed instrumental variables based on the spatial weight matrix, and then discussed the effects of the expected development targets formulated by local governments on high-quality development, conditional heterogeneity, and mechanisms. The results showed that: ① Excessive economic growth targets were not conducive to high-quality development, while environmental constraints targets had a significant role in promoting it and could slow down the erosion effect of excessive economic growth targets on high-quality development. This conclusion still held after solving a series of robustness tests, such as the endogenous bias. ② Heterogeneity analysis found that, with the implementation of the ecological civilization concept, China' s economy could achieve a win-win situation of quantity increase and quality improvement. To better promote high-quality development, the target positioning of cities with good economic foundations should weaken economic increment and strengthen environmental constraints, and the growth targets and environmental constraints set by local governments should be endogenous to their own regional resource endowments and leave appropriate elastic spaces. ③ The mechanism test showed that improving the economic growth targets reduced the level of innovation and raised the amount of new investment in the region, which was not conducive to high-quality development. Environmental constraints could promote technological innovation and limit the blind expansion of new investment, thus promoting high-quality development. Based on the above research conclusions, this paper summarizes policy implications from the aspects of political performance evaluation, formulation of expected development targets, technological innovation, and green development to promote the synergy between economic growth and green development in China and the synchronization of expected target management and high-quality development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of climate warming on world agricultural production and food security has become increasingly obvious. As an important source of carbon emissions and the carbon sink system, the green development of agriculture is one of the important ways to alleviate the crisis and achieve China' s goals of reaching peak carbon emissions and carbon neutrality. Exploiting the potential of agricultural carbon sinks and accurately calculating agricultural net carbon emissions are of great significance to promoting the green development of agriculture meeting the ' dual carbon' goals. Based on the dual characteristics of the agricultural carbon cycle, this paper sorted out the logical relationship between agricultural green development and the agricultural carbon cycle, incorporated the role of agricultural carbon sinks into the calculation framework of agricultural carbon emissions, and measured China' s agricultural net carbon emissions from 2000 to 2019 by time and region. The decoupling model of agricultural net carbon emissions from agricultural economic growth was constructed. The results of the study found that the total amount of carbon emissions from agricultural sources increased from 277.899 million t in 2000 to 308.383 1 million t in 2019, with an average annual growth rate of 0.52%, but the agricultural carbon emission intensity showed a trend of continuous decline; the agricultural carbon sink increased from 99.539 9 million t in 2000 to 133.039 million t in 2019, with an average annual growth rate of 1.46%, and the agricultural carbon sink resources were considerable. The intensity of agricultural carbon source emissions was higher in the west than in other regions and there was a clear gap with the eastern region. The total amount of agricultural carbon source emissions, carbon sinks, and net carbon emissions all showed a medium-high pattern. The decoupling relationship between agricultural economic growth and agricultural net carbon emissions was mainly manifested in two decoupling states: strong decoupling and weak decoupling. Nearly 50% of the provinces achieved the ideal strong decoupling state in terms of agricultural green development, while the remaining provinces were in a weak decoupling state, and the decoupling state was generally ideal. Finally, this paper puts forward targeted countermeasures and suggestions to promote the green development of agriculture and help achieve the ' dual carbon' goals: we should accurately locate the carbon source; ensure the ' double bottom line' of food security and pig production capacity under low-carbon agriculture; resolve the resource endowment differences between regions; explore the potential of the agricultural carbon trading market; create a new path for farmers to increase their income, maintain the strong and improve the weak; and strive to achieve the ' package' of strong decoupling in agriculture to help achieve the ' dual carbon' goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green technology innovation is an important instrument to promote green development. It is a long-standing and typical fact in China that the behavior of local governments in setting economic growth targets similar to those of neighboring regions contradicts the unbalanced development between Chinese regions. Exploring the impact of this phenomenon on green technology innovation reveals, to some extent, whether the current economic growth target strategy is still applicable to China's green development. To answer this question, this study used light and economic growth target data to calculate the deviation of the target from the actual resource endowment and empirically analyzed its impact on green innovation with a zero-inflated negative binomial regression model. The study found that the deviation from target and green technology innovation had an 'inverted U-shaped' relationship, i.e., a moderate increase in the economic growth target could motivate local governments to seek new skills (e.g., green technology) to fulfill their commitments. However, an excessive deviation from resource endowment could force governments to distort resource allocation in order to increase economic growth and inhibit green innovation. Heterogeneity analysis showed that: 1 Compared with utility model patents, green invention patents faced a greater crowding-out effect. 2 Companies in non-state, small, medium, and micro, as well as non-polluting industries were more vulnerable to green innovation. 3 The financial pressure, internal control level and innovation ability of enterprises, the innovation environment, the legal environment, and the green development level of regions all affected the relationship between goal deviation and green innovation. Accordingly, it is proposed that in order to boost green development, China needs to further optimize the economic growth target strategy, improve the institutional mechanism to promote green innovation, and improve the performance assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goals of carbon peak and carbon neutrality are important starting points for promoting green, low-carbon, and high-quality development of China's economy and society. As the core of modern economy, finance plays an important role in coping with climate change and green and low-carbon development. Financial agglomeration is the development trend and significant feature of financial industry, and the relationship between financial agglomeration and green development has attracted extensive attention. This article first constructed a two-sector output density model, including the financial sector and non-financial sector, and analyzed the impact of financial agglomeration on carbon emission efficiency from the theoretical mechanism. Taking China's provincial panel data from 2005 to 2018 as the research sample, this article then used the non-radial distance function and the SBM-DEA model to measure the provincial carbon emission efficiency. Based on the panel smooth transfer model, the study also investigated the nonlinear impact of financial agglomeration on carbon emission efficiency. On this basis, a moderation effect model was constructed to investigate the regulatory effect of economic growth pressure on the relationship between them. The results showed that: 1 Financial agglomeration had a significant smooth transfer effect on carbon emission efficiency. When the level of financial agglomeration was low, it would inhibit the improvement of carbon emission efficiency. With the improvement of the level of financial agglomeration, the impact on carbon emission efficiency would change from inhibition to being a driving factor. 2 Economic growth pressure had a significant regulatory effect on the relationship between financial agglomeration and carbon emission efficiency. Moderate economic growth pressure promoted the impact of financial agglomeration on carbon emission efficiency and made the threshold of financial agglomeration advance; excessive economic growth pressure inhibited the impact of financial agglomeration on carbon emission efficiency and delayed the threshold of financial agglomeration. The above conclusions were valid after replacing the explained variables, transforming the estimation method, considering the limited variables, excluding the samples of municipalities directly under the central government, and being re-estimated by the IV Tobit model considering endogeneity. Based on the conclusions, this article proposes that, on the one hand, we should reasonably allocate financial resources, actively play the radiation role of financial agglomeration, and steadily improve the quality and efficiency of financial services in the real economy. On the other hand, it is necessary to innovate the assessment standards for officials, do a good job in the expected management of economic growth objectives, and guide the formation of economic expectations in line with the current situation of local development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]