Dynamic Relationships, Regional Differences, and Driving Mechanisms between Economic Development and Carbon Emissions from the Farming Industry: Empirical Evidence from Rural China

Abstract

The coordinated development of the economy, resources, and environment is a key aspect of sustainable development. China’s rapid agricultural modernization has been accompanied by the continuous growth of rural economic aggregate and carbon emissions from the planting industry. However, the quantitative relationship between these two factors and its internal mechanism are not yet fully understood. In this paper, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) method is used to calculate the carbon emissions of the planting industry in China from 1998–2019. Based on this, the Tapio decoupling analysis model was constructed to study the decoupling relationship between economic development and carbon emissions of the planting industry in China from 1998–2019 and the associated spatial and temporal evolution patterns. The effect of the complete decomposition model (without residuals), in terms of carbon emissions from the planting industry, on the process of economic development and its transmission mechanism are introduced. The results show that: (1) The carbon emissions of the planting industry in China increased with the economic development occurring from 1998–2005, where agricultural economic development was highly dependent on resource factors and the environment. The growth trend of carbon emissions of the planting industry slowed from 2006 to 2019, while economic development has gradually realized the decoupling of carbon emissions from the planting industry. (2) From 1998–2019, in Heilongjiang, Sichuan, and Hunan, the economic development was given priority, showing strong and negative decoupling with carbon emissions from farming. The economic development in most regions were given priority, showing strong decoupling with carbon emissions from farming. Up to 2019, decoupling was observed with a significant trend of spatial agglomeration. (3) Economic scale effects had a positive influence on the carbon emissions of the planting industry, while the technology effect and population effect had an inhibiting influence on the carbon emissions of the planting industry. The key policy implication of this paper is that improvement of the quality of economic development serves as the premise for the transformation of the economic development mode. It is necessary to reasonably regulate the economic growth rate and expansion scale, reduce resource consumption and pollutant emission technology, and to make full use of resources, in order to provide a basis for the formulation of reasonable emission reduction policies. An effective way to realize the sustainable development of the agricultural economy would be to improve the technical efficiency, control the population scale appropriately, and optimize the agricultural industrial structure.

[Retracted] Empirical Study on the Relationship between Agricultural Economic Structure Growth and Environmental Pollution Based on Time‐Varying Parameter Vector Autoregressive Model

“…In order to further grasp the relationship between environmental pollution and industrial structure change and economic growth mode since China's reform and opening up, this paper selects 34 years' time series data from 1980 to 2013 as research data, and The Compilation of 65 years' Statistical Data of New China is the main source of data in this paper. Specifically, variable selection and data explanation mainly include the following five aspects [ 12 ].…”

Does economic agglomeration improve agricultural green total factor productivity? Evidence from China's Yangtze river delta

“…While economic agglomeration might improve technical efficiency, it also produces additional resource consumption and demand, resulting in a rebound effect in which resource savings from improved technical efficiency were countered by increasing carbon emissions from economic expansion. 23 Furthermore, the extension of urbanization as a result of economic agglomeration will influence agricultural infrastructure in surrounding rural regions, increase agricultural costs and the degree of fragmentation of cultivated land, and adversely affect agricultural productivity. 24 The effect of economic agglomeration on environmental pollution depends on the combined effect of the above positive and negative effects, and therefore some empirical studies have found the relationship between the two to be uncertain or non-linear.…”

Research on carbon emission differences decomposition and spatial heterogeneity pattern of China’s eight economic regions

“…The results show that regions with solid carbon sink capacity are more likely to become carbon refuges in the future. Due to the high cost of CCUS technology and the significant reduction of new energy power generation costs, the industry develops slowly and has high uncertainty (Liu et al 2021a , b , c ). Therefore, this paper selects the carbon sink capacity (forest carbon sink) as the influencing factor of the corresponding carbon neutralization emission reduction targets and does not consider CCUS and other technologies.…”

“…To achieve China’s regional carbon emission reduction goals, many scholars explore China’s carbon emissions from different perspectives. Liu et al ( 2021a , b , c ) found out the main driving factors of carbon emissions of various regional transportation industries by analyzing the carbon intensity differences of China’s regional transportation industries. Gao et al ( 2021 ) used the input–output method to explore the impact of China’s provincial large-scale population migration on trade, empirically analyzing the effect of population transfer and trade carbon transfer on regional carbon emissions and targeted suggestions for China’s provincial carbon emission reduction.…”

“…According to the calculation results, Nam and Jin ( 2021 ) calculated the impact of energy efficiency on carbon emissions and put forward targeted emission reduction suggestions. Liu et al ( 2021a , b , c ) summed the relationship between agricultural carbon emissions and economic development. Cui et al ( 2021 ) estimated the impact of carbon sink on agricultural carbon emission by introducing the effect of carbon sink on carbon emission.…”