Abstract
Due to the importance of understanding the relationship between agricultural growth and environmental quality, we analyzed how high-quality agricultural development can affect carbon emissions in Northwest China. Based on the concept of the environmental Kuznets curve, this study uses provincial panel data from 1993 to 2017 to make empirical analyses inflection point changes and spatio-temporal differences in agricultural carbon emissions. The highlights of our findings are as follows: (1) In Northwest China, there is an inverse N-shape curve, and the critical values are 3578 yuan/hm2 and 45,738 yuan/hm2, respectively. (2) For 2017, the agricultural economic intensity was 50,670 yuan/hm2, exceeding the critical value (high inflection point) of 45,738 yuan/hm2. (3) Ningxia, Gansu, and Qinghai have not reached the turning point. Having comparable climate, natural conditions, and overall environmental factors, these three provinces would reach the turning point at similar time periods. (4) The average value in agricultural carbon emission intensity in the region is 767.79 kg/hm2, and the order based on intensity is Xinjiang > Shaanxi > Ningxia > Gansu > Qinghai.
Highlights
In order to contribute to lowering global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, countries must reduce their carbon footprints, which would require improving their ecological environment and advocating for a low-carbon economy
Compared with the existing research [12,13,14,15,16,17], the innovation of this study lies mainly in three key aspects: First, our research examined the carbon emission and agricultural economic intensities for agriculture in Northwest China
The cointegration test showed that the lnPCO2 (1), lnP-AGDP (1),2 (1), and3 (1) rejected the hypothesis, indicating no cointegration relationship between the variables at 5% significance level
Summary
In order to contribute to lowering global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, countries must reduce their carbon footprints, which would require improving their ecological environment and advocating for a low-carbon economy. Tian et al [1] found that land-use change, agricultural activities, and waste management are the primary sources of terrestrial biogenic greenhouse gases and significantly contribute to climate change through increased CH4 and N2 O emissions. From the sixth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Climate Change and. Land (2019), greenhouse gases emitted by the agriculture, forestry, and other land-use (AFOLU) sector account for 23% of the total anthropogenic greenhouse gases, while about a third of the natural carbon. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 187; doi:10.3390/ijerph17010187 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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