2026-10-10T17:35:00Z https://api.figshare.com/v2/oai

oai:figshare.com:article/34027974 2026-09-29T22:02:28Z category_575 portal_316 item_type_3 month_year_09_2026

Supplementary file 1_Carbon labels and carbon trading as market-based incentives for conserving traditional upland rice: a case study from Hainan, China.docx Qimin Cao (25139316) Weipeng Yi (25139319) Tao Guo (126667) Chuanliang Fu (25139322) Zhijun Zhang (315079) Wen Zhang (7555) Yujia Wu (11114741) Food Packaging, Preservation and Safety agrobiodiversity carbon label carbon trading China ecological compensation market-based incentives traditional upland rice Introduction<p>Traditional crop varieties that underpin agricultural biodiversity are rapidly disappearing as their cultivation becomes economically marginalized. Public ecological compensation has proven effective in incentivizing on-farm conservation, but it faces long-term fiscal sustainability constraints. Market-based carbon mechanisms including carbon labeling and carbon trading are increasingly proposed as complementary incentives, but real-world documented cases in smallholder traditional agroecosystems remain extremely limited. This study addresses this gap by analyzing an operational pilot practice launched for the globally important Shanlan upland rice system in Hainan, China.</p>Methods<p>Drawing on program documents, field interview records, and official verification data from the UNDP-GEF C-SAP3 2020–2025 project, this study systematically evaluates the full operational logic, implementation process and actual performance of the combined carbon label and carbon trading mechanism. A comparative analysis framework is constructed to compare the incentive strength, operation cost and institutional positioning of market-based carbon instruments and existing differentiated public ecological compensation schemes.</p>Results<p>The Shanlan rice conservation system has established a verified carbon sequestration rate of 2.1 t CO₂/ha/yr, completed the first provincial carbon market transaction of RMB 530,000 in 2024, and officially released the dedicated Shanlan rice carbon label at the 2024 Hainan Winter Trade Fair. At the current carbon price of RMB 50/t, the annual carbon revenue per mu is only about RMB 7, accounting for roughly 3% of the existing public ecological compensation standard of RMB 200–220/mu. The carbon accounting parameter has already been embedded into the local ecological compensation calculation algorithm as an ecological service value component.</p>Discussion<p>The empirical results confirm that current carbon market instruments can only play a complementary rather than substitution role for public ecological compensation in traditional crop conservation scenarios, and their near-term value is more institutional than purely financial. The ambiguity between modeled sequestration parameters and actual measured conservation outcomes still limits the credibility of such market mechanisms. Three core propositions including incentive complementarity, measurement validation and long-term institutional stewardship are proposed to support future comparative research on similar agrobiodiversity conservation practices.</p> 2026-09-29T22:02:28Z Dataset Dataset 10.3389/fsufs.2026.1969345.s001 https://figshare.com/articles/dataset/Supplementary_file_1_Carbon_labels_and_carbon_trading_as_market-based_incentives_for_conserving_traditional_upland_rice_a_case_study_from_Hainan_China_docx/34027974 CC BY 4.0