This article examines the impact of the stability of the management rights of transferred land (TLMR) on the adoption of technologies aiming to reduce the use of chemical fertilizers (ARFTs) based on the survey data of large-scale grain growing households in Anhui, China. Using the IV-Probit model, the present paper defines the stability of TLMR and the results estimated by IV-Probit model shows that a one-year extension of land lease period can increase the probability of using organic fertilizer and soil-testing formula fertilizer by 3.16% and 4.92%, respectively, while contract breaching in the lease period can reduce the probability of using organic fertilizer and soil-testing formula fertilizer by 46.9% and 51.38%, respectively. However, the land-lease period and land transfer contract breaching in the lease period have no significant effect on the use of farmyard manure by large-scale grain growing households. The main conclusion is that improving the stability of TLMR is conducive to prompting large-scale grain growing households to adopt ARFTs, especially the adoption of organic fertilizer and soil-testing formula fertilizer. The government should improve the stability of TLMR by standardizing the form and content associated with land transfer contracts and setting the minimum land-lease term. Full article

As regional interaction increases in an open economy, a region’s green total factor productivity in agriculture must be considered alongside relationships with other regions. In this study, the slack-based model (SBM) global Malmquist–Luenberger (GML) index is used to measure the green total factor productivity of agriculture in each province of China, and the social network analysis (SNA) and vector autoregressive model (VAR) impulse response function (IRF) are used to examine the spatial network structure and regional interactivity. The research confirms that the absolute value and concentration of agricultural green total factor productivity are generally higher in the south than in the north of China, but the peak is lower in the south than in the north. The network density of agricultural green total factor productivity in China from 2008 to 2019 shows an increase, with the cut-off values of mean, 10, 50, and 100 treated as 4.97%, 2.57%, 3.30%, and 2.43%, respectively. From 2008 to 2019, the central potentials of network entry and network exit of green total factor productivity in China’s agriculture show a “V”-shaped and inverted “V”-shaped evolution path, respectively, with the density of cohesive subgroups growing, which demonstrates that the spatial structure of green total factor productivity in Chinese agriculture has experienced an evolutionary path from polycentric to monocentric to polycentric conditions. The spatial interaction of different cohesive subgroups is intensifying and has a certain degree of self-stability. In terms of regional interaction, the siphon effect of the east on the green development of agriculture in the central and western regions is significant, but the trickle-down effect is not obvious, and the interaction between the central and western regions has a catalytic effect on the efficiency of the green economy of agriculture in both regions. It is recommended that targeted policies be introduced to support the flow of agricultural factors and industrial division of labour between the central and western regions and the south and north, taking into account the actual situation. The novelty of this paper is that it focuses on the green total factor productivity of Chinese agriculture and combines the innovative use of the social network analysis paradigm to analyse the green development of agriculture in a country from a spatial dynamic evolutionary perspective. A limitation of the research methodology in this paper is its poor applicability to closed economy analysis. Full article

Environmental regulation is essential to promote green and sustainable development in dairy farming. Nevertheless, limited studies have focused on the impact of environmental regulation on the green total factor productivity (GTFP) of dairy farming. This study measures the GTFP of dairy farming in 27 provinces in China during 2009–2020 using the Slack Based Measure (SBM) model and the Malmquist–Luenberger (ML) productivity index. In addition, random effects and threshold regression models are used to measure the impact of environmental regulations on the GTFP of dairy farming. The results demonstrate the fluctuating growth of the GTFP of dairy farming and that technical efficiency is the primary driver of the GTFP growth. The annual growth rate of GTFP is the highest in large-scale dairy farming (3.27%), followed by medium-scale dairy farming (2.73%) and small-scale dairy farming (1.98%). Furthermore, environmental regulation positively affects the GTFP and has a threshold effect on the GTFP, with the urban–rural income gap as the threshold variable in medium-scale dairy farming and small-scale dairy farming. The impact on the GTFP can be significantly negative if the urban–rural income gap crosses the threshold value. Overall, this study provides some policy recommendations for attaining green and sustainable dairy farming development in China. Full article

The relationship between urbanization and the ecological environment is not conclusive in the literature. We used the provincial data from China from 1998 to 2019 to empirically study the relationship between the urbanization ratio and ecological environment which is proxied by the NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index) from the remote sensing data. The results indicate that the coefficient of the interaction between urbanization and per capita GDP is statistically significant and negative (−0.0946), while the coefficient of urbanization itself is very trivial and not statistically significant. It implies that urbanization could reduce ecological quality, particularly for the high-income regions. The higher the urbanization ratio is, the larger the negative impact is. It implies that urban expansion does reduce the ecological environment. The effect of economic development level on the NDVI can be divided into three stages: the one where the NDVI improves with the increase of GDP per capita (urbanization rate of less than 77.59%), the one where the value of the NDVI is not affected by the level of GDP per capita (urbanization rate equal to 77.59%), and the one where the NDVI decreases with the increase of GDP per capita (urbanization rate of more than 77.59%). Full article

Water and soil scarcity and pollution have become more severe problems in China in recent years. On one hand, rapid economic growth has led to increasing environmental problems. On the other hand, the environmental problems resulting from human economic activities can impose new constraints on industrial agglomeration, making economic development unsustainable. In the present study, an individual fixed-effect model was constructed based on the framework of the new economic geography and the provincial-level data of China. The model estimated its parameters with OLS in order to analyze how the mechanisms of industrial agglomeration are affected by resource security and environmental factors. In addition, this study also used Hausman statistical tests and Fisher–PP unit root tests to analyze the endogenous problems and robustness of the model, respectively. The results showed that water and soil scarcity and environmental pollution have negative effects on industrial agglomeration. The negative effects were observed to significantly increase with levels of local government competition, but did not vary with the regional market segmentation. Full article

Catastrophe risk governance has become one of the key issues affecting global sustainable development. As great changes have taken place in the global social ecosystem, the degree of interconnection between different regions in today’s society is much greater than ever before. Various types of contact networks, e.g., the production chain and supply chain, have been created, which provide diversified channels for the spread of catastrophe risk across time and space. In the context of interconnection, this paper first analyzes the drastic changes of the current disaster risk system. Severe catastrophe risk has posed a great threat to the highly growing international trade, and has also tested the capabilities of national comprehensive disaster defense. Thus, this paper analyzes the main characteristics of China’s comprehensive disaster defense capability, including physical, social, and humanistic defense capability. Finally, this paper puts forward the key points to resolve catastrophe risk from the perspective of decision-makers, including improving the decision-makers’ ability to study and judge the catastrophe chain and the impact of catastrophe, and the national resource reserve capacity to cope with the catastrophe. Full article

The influence of the nontimber forest products (NTFPs) on the coordinated economic and ecological development has received considerable attention, where the results are mixed. This study took Lin’an District in Zhejiang Province of China as an example for analysis. Using long-term (more than 40 years) data, system coupling and autoregressive distributed lag models were combined to analyze the effect of NTFP development on coordinated economic–ecological development. The results show that large-scale commercial NTFP development positively affected coordinated economic–ecological development, and a long-term stable equilibrium relationship between them existed. The degree of regional economic–ecological coupling increased from 0.05 in 1978 to 0.98 in 2019, and both area and value of NTFP had a significant effect on the coupling degree at the 5% level. These findings indicate that NTFP development is an effective method to promote the coordinated development of the economy and ecological environment especially in mountain areas, and the government should encourage NTFP development by ecological management, strengthening policy guidance, and providing technological innovation support, etc. Full article