Peak and fall of China's agricultural GHG emissions

Abstract

Agriculture takes a large proportion of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, playing an essential role in achieving global climate goals. However, targeted mitigation opportunities for agricultural GHG are still unclear due to the lack of standalone analyses at sub-national and food-specific scales. Here, we accounted for agricultural GHG emissions in 2000–2020 in mainland China and found that the largest emission sources by region, product group, process, and gas were Hunan province, rice cultivation, enteric fermentation, and CH4, respectively. Agricultural emissions peaked in 2015 and temporarily declined by 8% by 2020 and possibly decline by 30–36% by 2060, primarily owing to the reduction potential from meat production in eastern and northern China. The emissions produced and land needed per unit of food product reduced mostly, while emissions per unit of land use increased in many regions and food groups. We conclude that the opportunities and challenges for GHG mitigation lie in a few top emitters in central China where intensities were unexpectedly much larger than the levels of the national average and marginal agriculture in the northeast.