Title: Health co-benefits of post-COVID-19 low-carbon recovery in Chinese cities
Abstract: Post-pandemic green recovery is pivotal in achieving global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by simultaneously revitalizing economies while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, air pollution and improving public welfare. However, sub-national and city-level understanding of green recovery, its efficacy, and its alignment with public health is poorly understood. Here, we focus on post-COVID-19 low-carbon recovery – economic growth combined with reduced carbon emissions – and explore health co-benefits in Chinese cities. A novel near-real-time daily carbon emission dataset of 48 cities in China is developed, coupled with detailed health and economic municipal statistics and models. We find that on average, six low-carbon recovery cities, mainly megacities, saved 1.2 times as many lives per 100000 population compared to the 42 other cities, and their annual monetary avoided premature deaths per 100000 population was 1.5 times more than the 42 other cities. The accumulated monetary health co-benefits for low-carbon recovery cities were US$ 4.2 billion (95% CI: 2.1-6.3) during the post-COVID-19 period. We show that government spending on electric vehicles increases the likelihood of achieving low-carbon recovery in Chinese cities. Our results underscore significant health co-benefits of low-carbon recovery, pointing to synergies between advancing local welfare and global environmental objectives.