School of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Energy and Natural Resources, Sunyani, Ghana.
Department of Economics, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2023 Sep;30(42):95773-95788. doi: 10.1007/s11356-023-28990-z. Epub 2023 Aug 9.
In the light of China's carbon-neutral goal, this study examines how food production, forest cover, trade openness, and rural population contribute to the quest of addressing China's agricultural nitrous oxide emissions. Time series data ranging from 1971 to 2018 was used for analysis in this study. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique was employed to evaluate potential cointegration as well as to ascertain the long and short-run effects of food production, forest cover, income, trade openness, and rural population on agricultural nitrous oxide emission. The Toda-Yamomoto causality analysis was also used to identify the causal relations between covariates (food production, forest cover, income, trade openness, and rural population) and the outcome variable (agricultural nitrous oxide emission). The long-run evidence is that rural population in itself tends to increase agricultural nitrous oxide emissions likewise food production. There is also validation of the existence of environmental Kuznets curve for agricultural nitrous oxide emissions. Moreover, income interacts with rural population to reduce agricultural nitrous oxide emissions in the long-run. Causality analysis indicated rural population affects the level of forest cover; forest cover is found to cause agricultural nitrous oxide emissions but the converse is not established, and income as well as the interaction between income and rural population determines agricultural nitrous oxide emissions. The short-run dynamics results establish an oscillatory equilibrium convergence for agricultural nitrous oxide emissions in event of structural disturbances. From the findings, the EKC hypothesis is relevant by offering avenue to reduce emission. Thus, income growth remains helpful in addressing nitrous oxide emission from the agricultural sector. However, research is needed to unravel why nitrous oxide tends to increase in many forest areas. Since food production cannot be halted, policy makers need to enhance the uptake of efficient food production technologies including developing and using more renewable energy for food production. It is important for authorities to attend to rural development in order to mitigate agricultural nitrous oxide emissions in China.
在中国碳中和目标的背景下，本研究探讨了食品生产、森林覆盖、贸易开放度和农村人口如何共同解决中国农业一氧化二氮排放问题。本研究使用了 1971 年至 2018 年的时间序列数据。采用自回归分布滞后（ARDL）技术来评估潜在的协整关系，并确定食品生产、森林覆盖、收入、贸易开放度和农村人口对农业一氧化二氮排放的长期和短期影响。还采用托达-山本因果关系分析来确定协变量（食品生产、森林覆盖、收入、贸易开放度和农村人口）与因变量（农业一氧化二氮排放）之间的因果关系。长期证据表明，农村人口本身就倾向于增加农业一氧化二氮排放，就像食品生产一样。此外，农业一氧化二氮排放也存在环境库兹涅茨曲线。此外，收入与农村人口在长期内相互作用，减少农业一氧化二氮排放。因果关系分析表明，农村人口影响森林覆盖水平；森林覆盖被发现会导致农业一氧化二氮排放，但反之则不然，收入以及收入和农村人口之间的相互作用决定了农业一氧化二氮排放。短期动态结果表明，在结构冲击的情况下，农业一氧化二氮排放会出现振荡均衡收敛。从研究结果来看，EKC 假说具有相关性，可以为减少排放提供途径。因此，收入增长仍然有助于解决农业部门的一氧化二氮排放问题。然而，需要进行研究以揭示为什么一氧化二氮在许多森林地区会增加。由于无法停止食品生产，政策制定者需要加强对高效食品生产技术的采用，包括开发和利用更多可再生能源用于食品生产。当局有必要关注农村发展，以减轻中国的农业一氧化二氮排放。
