Fresh insights for sustainable development: Collaborative governance of carbon emissions based on social network analysis

Abstract

Global climate change caused by carbon emissions has brought severe challenges to the sustainable development of global economy. In this context, this study constructs a weighted and directed carbon emission network for the European Union (EU). We use social network analysis to measure the indicators of the structural characteristics of the EU carbon emission network, and employ cluster analysis to investigate the role of countries in the carbon emission network. Furthermore, we use linear regression to explore the impacts of structural characteristics of carbon emission network on carbon emissions. The results show that, first the carbon emissions ties among the EU countries show a typical network structure during the sample period. Countries such as Germany, France, and Belgium are at the center of the carbon emission network, while Malta, Cyprus, and Croatia are at the edge. Second, different countries play the roles of "net spillover," "broker," "two-way spillover," and "net receiver" in the EU carbon emission network. Last, the increase of network density, the decrease of network hierarchy and the decrease of network efficiency all significantly reduce the carbon emission intensity of the EU, and narrow the spatial difference of carbon emissions among countries. Improving the weighted centrality indicators of nodes in the carbon emission network is helpful to reduce the carbon emission intensity of the EU countries. Based on the findings, this article puts forward policy suggestions for the collaborative governance of EU carbon emission abatement.

Drivers and collaborative governance of public health emergency response in the context of digital city

“…The characteristic of collaborative governance can be said to be a “center divergence” type, where “center” refers to the role of the government as the core in coordinating and taking overall responsibilities, and “divergence” refers to the process in which the government empowers other entities participating in governance. In addition, the characteristic of holistic governance is the “hourglass type,” where the upper end of the hourglass represents the overall government and the lower end represents other governance participants guided by the overall government ( 25 ). In intergovernmental collaborative governance, intergovernmental relations refer to the interlocking relationships formed by different governments in the vertical and horizontal directions, as well as the relationships between governments of different administrative divisions.…”

Unpacking the Sub-Regional Spatial Network of Land-Use Carbon Emissions: The Case of Sichuan Province in China

“…The core concept of this model is that the interaction between two regions is directly proportional to the scale parameters and inversely proportional to the distance parameters [47]. The carbon emission ties between two divisions are thus directly proportional to their carbon emission scales and inversely proportional to their spatial distance [6]. However, divisions with larger carbon emission scales but lower economic development levels might be at the edge of the spatial network of carbon emissions.…”

“…Specifically, the network centrality and the roles within the network clusters of different countries have changed over time in the collaboration of engaging in land-use carbon emission reduction activities. Some countries gradually became the center of the network, while others were at the edge and play net spillover roles within the cluster [6].…”

“…Land-use carbon emissions are closely related to the social, economic and ecological activities which have spatial relationships [26,27]. In addition to estimating the sources and sinks of carbon from LUC at different levels, the spatial network or relationship of carbon emissions was also explored to further understand the correlation structure of carbon emissions within or across regions [6,28,29]. Social Network Analysis (SNA) subsequently was regarded as a prevalent method to explore spatial relationships [28,30].…”