Abstract
Environmental degradation by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has been an important challenge of sustainable economic development and climate changes control. Industry is the major source of CO2 emissions, whereas 84% of global anthropogenic methane and nitrous-oxide emissions emerge from agriculture. The impact of agro-economic factors on GHG emissions in European developing economies (Southeastern Europe in focus) as compared with European advanced economies has been examined in this paper. The results have confirmed the existence of significant differences in impact of these factors depending on the level of economic development. For both groups of economies, we have confirmed the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis (inverted U-shaped relationship between GDP per capita and carbon dioxide emissions), but different sectoral outputs, too. We have also established different impacts of agro emission sources. In developing economies, we have recognized livestock breeding as a predominant factor and recommended measures for reducing the emissions in this sector, following developed economies. The findings may be useful to European developing economies as a support to implementation of binding commitments emerging from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In the panel analysis, we have taken into consideration the non-stationarity of the series, heterogeneity of the sample, and also examined a dynamic specification.
Highlights
The trend of global warming caused by increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has been pronounced in the last several decades
We have estimated empirical model Equation (3) first by means of ordinary last square (OLS) for both groups of economies, including the interaction terms and we have established that majority of interaction terms is significant, which indicates that there are statistically significant differences between these two groups of economies
Emissions of GHG are the main cause of climate changes
Summary
The trend of global warming caused by increased GHG emissions has been pronounced in the last several decades. Climate changes influenced by GHG emissions have caused temperature increase of up to 2 ̋C [1]. Emissions of CO2 total 58.8% out of the overall GHG emissions in the world. The existing global energetic system and economic development are directly responsible for such result [2]. CO2 emissions (metric tons per capita) in highly advanced economies total on average 12.5 and in middle-income developed ones 3.3, whereas in low-income developed economies they total 0.28 [3]. More recently, large developing countries show a pronounced growth of impact on pollution, inter alia, because they have the highest concentration of world’s population, which has an increasingly emphasized need for energy consumption
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