Heterogeneous climate risks for China's GI products under the China-EU Agreement: Disentangling effects across product categories and protection boundaries?

Agri-food products with geographical indications (GI products) are territorially embedded agricultural systems whose production and value depend on legally defined protection boundaries, rendering them biophysically vulnerable to climate change. Despite extensive examination of terroir-associated climate risks, the heterogeneous climate-driven potential land-use risks across product categories and protection boundaries remain insufficiently understood. Based on 7260 planting occurrence records, this study employs the MaxEnt model to conduct an exploratory simulation of shifts in the suitable areas for 185 Chinese GI products across seven categories under the China-EU GI Agreement. Consequently, it identifies high-risk GI products/categories, assesses their potential sensitivity and pressures from intra- and extra-zone exposure disparities under future climate scenarios. This study addresses three core questions: (i) identifying key environmental variables; (ii) assessing the potential climate sensitivity of specific categories; and (iii) quantifying potential intra- and extra-zone exposure pressures. Results demonstrate that (1) climatic factors constitute the primary biophysical drivers of GI product suitability, followed by topographic and soil factors; (2) Tea & Coffee products exhibit the highest potential climate sensitivity among all categories, while 35 identified high-sensitivity GI products face significant suitable area change or displacement risks; and (3) under future climate scenarios, the potential legal exposure induced by suitability expansion outside designated GI zones is projected to be approximately twice that of the potential moral hazard to product quality arising from environmental mismatches inside, underscoring a profound spatial mismatch between shifting ecological niches and static institutional boundaries. These findings highlight emerging land-use and institutional governance challenges for GI systems under climate change, offering policy insights for empowering entrepreneurial resilience, implementing category-specific interventions, and dynamically adjusting GI protection boundaries.