The nexus between agricultural land use, urbanization, and greenhouse gas emissions: Novel implications from different stages of income levels

Abstract

The current study establishes theoretical and empirical linkages among urbanization, economic growth, land use, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The prime objective of this article is to draw novel conclusions and policies for the different income levels of countries regarding the urbanization and agriculture sector land on environmental pollution. Employing panel data of 50 countries for the period 1990 to 2019, this study uses the lasso regression and non-parametric regression panel data methods to investigate the impacts of land use (arable, permanent pastures, and cropland), urbanization growth, and economic progress on the pollution levels. After estimating a Lasso regression to find the best auto-regressive predictive specification, we used an auto-regressive partially linear regression where each of the drivers’ effects was modelled non-parametrically. The elasticity effect of the urban population on emissions is significantly positive and sizable. In addition, the effect distribution shows a non-negligible share of observations with an elasticity higher than one. Urban population growth is a serious threat to climate change, as it seems to increase sharply CO2 emissions (although with an elasticity pace smaller than one). The elasticity effect of GDP is significantly negative, which implies that the scale of production, by triggering efficiency, can have a positive effect on emissions reduction. The results argue that agglomeration negative effects put in place by larger urban population can partly explain this finding. Overall, the study argues that urbanization growth and economic activities lead to GHG emissions, whereas the study also discusses novel implications and the role of agricultural land use apropos Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The empirical findings allow us to draw novel conclusions and guidelines in line with SDGs. The agricultural reforms might include irrigation and farming techniques such as spin farming, solar tube wells, tunnel farming, technology use agreements, plant double helix, etc.