1.5° C Mitigation Pathways for Domestic Migration in China

Rural-urban migration and its growing carbon footprint will challenge the world in keeping global average temperature increase to 1.5℃ compared to pre-industrial levels. Existing studies have investigated the emissions of migrants at the national level. However, there has been no clear and comprehensive understanding of the 1.5℃ mitigation pathways under the background of urbanization in China. This study first quantified the carbon footprints of migrant consumption in 30 Chinese provinces in 2013 and 2015. An integrated approach was developed to match the Chinese Multiregional Input–Output (MRIO) table with household survey data that cover 200,000 rural-urban migrant survey samples. Furthermore, this study adopted the three Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) to quantify the carbon budgets and trajectories of the migrants and permanent residents to align with the 1.5℃ climate target. The results suggest that the average migrant’s carbon footprint ranges from 2.3 to 2.6 tCO2e per capita in 2015. To align with 1.5℃ pathways, the carbon footprint of migrants should be held below 3.4 tCO2e per capita under the 12 SSPs-1.9 W/m2 scenarios from 2020 and keep decreasing to net-zero before 2050. The finding calls for urgent action in the race to decarbonize by accelerating net-zero pathways and making a greater contribution than the nationally committed carbon neutrality target in 2060