Responding to Climate Change: Assessing the Current Situation and Influencing Factors of Forest Carbon Sinks in China

Driven by the intensification of global climate change and the goal of "dual carbon", forest carbon sink, as the core path of natural solutions, has become a key lever to balance carbon emissions from human activities and ecological restoration. Based on 31 provinces in China from 2003 to 2018, this paper selected forest stock expansion to measure provincial forest carbon sink validity, explored the evolution trend of forest carbon sink validity in time, space, and region and its driving factors, and further constructed a spatial Durbin model. To quantify the direct and indirect effects of natural and policy factors on forest carbon sink validity in local and neighboring provinces. It was found that the forest carbon sink validity showed an evolutionary trend of "higher in the west, faster in the east, and catch-up in the middle". The benchmark regression results showed that the increase in R&D investment and industrial structure optimization had a significant positive driving effect on the rise of carbon sink. At the same time, excessive government intervention significantly inhibited its development. The direct effects of urbanization and economic development level did not pass the significance test. The spatial effect analysis shows that the positive spillover effect of R&D intensity and industrial structure optimization can significantly promote the carbon sink growth of neighboring provinces, while the spatial spillover effect of government intervention is significantly negative, and the indirect effect of economic development and urbanization is still not significant. In this regard, it is necessary to strengthen regional science and technology development, improve forestry supervision policies, and then help optimize the forestry service system, to provide theoretical and practical guidance for promoting the high-quality development of the forestry industry.