Climate change characterized by global warming brings severe challenges to natural ecosystem and sustainable development of human society (Liu and Deng, 2011; Deng and Bai, 2014). Carbon emission induced by human activities is the main reason for global warming. The influence mechanisms of carbon emission on regional/global climate change and social-economic development have attracted widespread attention from academics and politics (Steinberger et al., 2012; Chen and Chen, 2012; Jackson et al., 2015). Facing the challenges of climate change, more than 150 world leaders adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Summit. The SDGs build on the achievements of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and set a transformative agenda that emphasizes integration and balance among economic, social and environmental aspirations. The SDGs framework is intended to manage trade-offs and maximize synergies across the 17 SDGs and associated 169 targets (Griggs et al 2013). In addition, the Paris Agreement, which was negotiated at the 21^st Conference of the Parties of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris in 2015, has entered into force since November 2016. It aims to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by holding the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, with an aspirational 1.5°C limit, in the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty (UNFCCC, 2015). To contribute to the SDGs and the Paris Agreement, it is of great significance to develop new models and approaches to evaluate economic and social cost of carbon emission and carbon reductions, analyze trade-offs and synergies among economic, social and environmental development, and explore scientific climate change adaptation strategies.

In recent decades, economic theories and approaches have been widely adopted to the analysis of climate change impacts on social-economic system (Springmann, 2014; Sterner, 2015; Burke et al., 2015). However, the long-term mechanisms and complexities of climate change’s impact on social-economic system greatly challenge traditional economic methodologies (Kunreuther et al., 2013; Estrada et al., 2015; Funk et al., 2015). New theories and methodologies for the economics of climate change are urgently needed to tackle with complex issues, such as to recognize the connections between climate factors and socio-economic system, to simulate the economic impact of carbon emission and carbon reduction on different industries and regions, to evaluate social costs of carbon emission and carbon reduction in world’s main countries and typical regions, which will provide scientific basis and methods support for climate change mitigation and adaptation and sustainable development.

Climate change is not just an environmental issue, but also a development issue (Deng et al., 2015; Singh et al., 2016). Clarifying impact mechanisms of carbon emission on social-economic system is beneficial to developing climate change adaptation strategies. It also needs badly the breakthrough to study on the impact of climate change and carbon reduction on the social-economic integrating climate model and scenario analysis with SDGs, to assess the impacts, costs and risks of carbon reduction on high energy-consuming industries, to analyze the impacts and costs of carbon management measures on household consumption and enterprise production, to explore the influencing mechanism and assessment methods of strategies and measures for climate change mitigation and adaptation, and to clarify the trade-offs and synergies among social, economic and environmental development dimensions.

Our knowledge on how climate change effects social-economic system is still limited. We welcome the submission of high-quality conceptual and empirical papers for ideas and inspirations to the topics, but not be limited, to the following:

Arrhenius (1896) proposed that human activities might alter the climate, but it would take a thousand years if atmospheric CO₂ concentration were to double. However, observed climate changes indicate that global warming has become the most pronounced since the 1970s. After the second industrial revolution, global per capita CO₂ emissions experienced a discontinuous growth of about 100% every 60 years. There are many studies carried out on the interaction mechanisms between global atmospheric CO₂ concentration and surface temperature, most of which employed global average CO₂ concentration (Cherubini et al., 2014; Leduc et al., 2016). However, in 2014, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) verified that atmospheric CO₂ concentration revealed non-uniform dynamic spatial distribution, thus more scientific and accurate data are crucial to improving research on global changes. In addition, most studies focused on coupling relationship between CO₂ concentrations and surface temperature, while less focused on exploring the coupling relationship among CO₂ concentrations, surface temperature, and social-economic system. Amongst the SDGs, climate change is considered the greatest global threat to human society, directly affects the lives and well-beings of millions of people with changing weather patterns, rising sea levels and extreme weather conditions. In this context, exploring the coupling mechanism among CO₂ concentrations, surface temperature and social-economic system is urgently needed, especially for studies on the influencing mechanism of carbon emission on the social-economic system.

The impact of climate change and carbon emission on the socio-economic system is extremely complex and requires multidisciplinary research. International economists have begun to apply economic theories to quantify economic impact and social cost of climate change and carbon emission (Springmann, 2014; Hope and Schaefer, 2015). Cost-benefit analysis of socio-economic systems is carried out by means of sensitivity analysis, discount rate, etc. Current studies also apply macroeconomic modeling to make economic development planning. However, in the context of the SDGs, there are great challenges in developing quantitative tools for the analysis of trade-offs and synergies among economic, social and environmental development, in response to the perceived limitations of traditional approaches. On the other hand, in view of the objective fact of non-uniform dynamic distribution of global atmospheric CO₂ concentration, it is also necessary to construct new climate change economics and technical systems to evaluate the social and economic costs of climate change and carbon emission. The mechanism of climate change and carbon emission impacts on socio-economic system and scientific evaluation of social and economic cost of climate change and carbon emission are still the key challenges in the field climate change economics (Friedlingstein et.al., 2014).

With the continuous development of cities and improvement of living standards, carbon emission space is increasingly scarce and gradually becomes an indispensable resource for national development. To solve the unprecedented global commons problem posed by climate change, nations must internalize the global externalities of their emissions (van der Ploeg 2016), otherwise, collective abatement efforts will never achieve an efficient and stable climate outcome. The spatial distribution of carbon emissions directly determines one country's emission reduction responsibilities. At present, international negotiations that aimed at reducing emissions depend on the attribution of historical responsibility for climate change. In this sense, how to balance justice, fairness, efficiency and historical responsibility are crucial to determine the emission reduction space and the emission reduction targets. As a consequence, it is urgent to deducing the spatial transfer path, clarifying the distribution pattern of orderly carbon reduction and finding appropriate measures that are consistent with the carbon control standards as well as economic development levels, then to offer technical specifications for carbon reduction. There have been some researches concluded economic theories of carbon reductions, which were centered on the externalities of carbon reductions, discount rate and intergenerational equity, and international game and cooperation. In the context of SDGs, it also badly needs the breakthrough in the evaluation of the impact of carbon reduction on disaster risk, identification of the impact mechanisms and ways of reducing carbon on social poverty, analysis of the role of human welfare characteristics in assessing social cost of carbon reduction, studies on poverty alleviation measures, adaptation mechanisms and adaptation measures of carbon reduction, clarification of the influence mechanism, influence approach and evaluation methods of adaptation measures and carbon reduction on human welfare (income, etc.) and human poverty alleviation and poverty reduction.

The world is undergoing profound and complex changes, and experiencing continuously deepened global climate change impacts. With recovery of global economy and deep adjustment of international carbon market rules, each country still faces serious development problems. With increasing attention to the impacts of climate change and needs for adaptation, research interest in climate scenarios has spawned, which focus on the next two to three decades with higher spatial and temporal resolution and improved representation of extreme events. With the aim to control the increase in global average temperature to be less than 2°C (aspirational 1.5°C limit) above pre-industrial levels, scenario analysis has emerged as a particularly well-suited method to explore the pathways to achieve the harmonized socioeconomic and environmental goals from a long-term perspective (Kok et al., 2007; Miller et al., 2014; Raskin et al., 2010). Combined with quantitative modeling, it has become a widely-used approach for exploring possible or plausible future pathways and their potential outcomes and implications (Edgar et al., 2015; Schandl et al., 2015; Swart et al., 2004; Vergragt and Quist, 2011). It is necessary to simulate different scenarios of carbon emission and carbon reduction for sustainable industrial transformations, to innovate multidisciplinary theory of climate change and carbon reduction response to socio-economic system under different temperature control scenarios, and to simulate the impacts of carbon emission and carbon reduction on poverty reduction and poverty alleviation under different temperature control scenarios combined with SDGs.