Synergies and Trade‐Offs Between China's Climate Actions and Other Sustainable Development Goals in the Context of Global Climate Governance

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:The causal discovery and effect estimation framework offers a methodological advance for analyzing SDG interactions beyond correlations.

🏢実務担当者:The regional typology of synergy-trade-off patterns can guide corporate sustainability teams in aligning with China's differentiated policies.

🏛政策担当者:The findings support the design of integrated, region-specific climate and sustainable development policies, relevant for both national and subnational governments.

ABSTRACT As global efforts to realize the United Nations 2030 Agenda continue to intensify, China is not only proactively responding to climate change but also steadily advancing the implementation of other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Existing studies largely rely on correlation‐based approaches, which can reveal statistical associations among SDGs but cannot adequately identify causal directionality, dynamic transmission processes, or policy‐relevant effect sizes, thereby limiting their applicability to policy design. To address this gap, the present study constructs a comprehensive provincial panel dataset grounded in China's localized SDG indicator framework and employs an innovative two‐stage analytical framework that integrates causal discovery with effect estimation, thereby illuminating the mechanisms through which climate action (SDG 13) interacts with other Sustainable Development Goals. Results indicate: (1) At the national level, climate action (SDG13) is the network's core, forming significant synergies with ecological conservation (SDG15), energy (SDG7), and responsible consumption (SDG12), with positive spillovers to health (SDG3). Key trade‐offs stem from path dependencies in traditional industrial and economic models (SDG9, SDG8), and climate policies may pose challenges to reducing inequality (SDG10). (2) At the provincial level, driven by highly heterogeneous natural resource endowments and socioeconomic environments across regions, three distinct patterns emerge, each corresponding to specific development constraints: a “high synergy‐low trade‐off” model in the eastern leading region, a “low synergy‐high trade‐off” model in energy‐intensive industrial bases, and an “ecological synergy‐dominated” model in the western ecological barrier zone. These findings underscore the necessity of formulating targeted interventions tailored to distinct regional characteristics. Ultimately, this study not only provides a novel analytical paradigm for comprehending interactions within complex socioeconomic and environmental systems but also offers empirical evidence and decision support for formulating integrated, differentiated sustainable development policies at both the national and provincial levels in China.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.1002/sd.71302first seen 2026-06-12 05:24:46