Study of the Spatio-Temporal Variation of Agricultural Sustainability at National and Provincial Levels in China

Abstract

As an important pillar of human civilization, the development of agriculture has gradually become the focus of the international community to solve the development dilemma and promote the implementation of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Agricultural sustainability issues are widely addressed in scientific literature and various reports by international organizations. However, there are some problems in the existing studies, such as the design of agricultural sustainable development evaluation indicators does not consider the differences in development stages and data statistical capacity of various countries, and the research depth of spatial and temporal change of agricultural sustainable development is insufficient. Agriculture has become a bottleneck for the world and China to achieve the SDGs. Based on the global indicator framework of the Sustainable Development Goals and comprehensive consideration of agricultural development common problems and regional characteristics, this work has established a basic index library consisting of 86 indicators to evaluate the agricultural sustainable development in China and provide the basis for the assessment in different regions. In the indicator optimization process, having considered the development stage of China, the basic characteristics of agriculture, data availability, and reliability, we determined an evaluation index system of China’s agricultural sustainable development that includes 25 specific indicators. The constant elasticity of substitution (CES) model was used to assess the temporal and spatial changes in agricultural sustainability in China at the national, regional, and provincial levels. The results showed that China’s Agricultural Sustainable Development Index (ASDI) score increased from 44.76 in 2011 to 59.22 in 2021, and the ASDI scores of all agricultural regions and provinces also increased to varying degrees. In terms of goal scores, SDG2, SDG6, SDG7, SDG8, SDG9, and SDG12 all exhibited an overall upward trend, in which SDG6 performed the best, and SDG2 performed the worst, scoring 84.76 and 43.05 in 2021, respectively. This paper will provide a basis for systematically evaluating the progress of agricultural sustainable development goals and accurately identifying unsustainable problems in agricultural development to help China implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.