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Reducing agricultural nitrous oxide emissions in China: the role of food production, forest cover, income, trade openness, and rural population

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Abstract

In the light of China’s carbon-neutral goal, this study examines how food production, forest cover, trade openness, and rural population contribute to the quest of addressing China’s agricultural nitrous oxide emissions. Time series data ranging from 1971 to 2018 was used for analysis in this study. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique was employed to evaluate potential cointegration as well as to ascertain the long and short-run effects of food production, forest cover, income, trade openness, and rural population on agricultural nitrous oxide emission. The Toda-Yamomoto causality analysis was also used to identify the causal relations between covariates (food production, forest cover, income, trade openness, and rural population) and the outcome variable (agricultural nitrous oxide emission). The long-run evidence is that rural population in itself tends to increase agricultural nitrous oxide emissions likewise food production. There is also validation of the existence of environmental Kuznets curve for agricultural nitrous oxide emissions. Moreover, income interacts with rural population to reduce agricultural nitrous oxide emissions in the long-run. Causality analysis indicated rural population affects the level of forest cover; forest cover is found to cause agricultural nitrous oxide emissions but the converse is not established, and income as well as the interaction between income and rural population determines agricultural nitrous oxide emissions. The short-run dynamics results establish an oscillatory equilibrium convergence for agricultural nitrous oxide emissions in event of structural disturbances. From the findings, the EKC hypothesis is relevant by offering avenue to reduce emission. Thus, income growth remains helpful in addressing nitrous oxide emission from the agricultural sector. However, research is needed to unravel why nitrous oxide tends to increase in many forest areas. Since food production cannot be halted, policy makers need to enhance the uptake of efficient food production technologies including developing and using more renewable energy for food production. It is important for authorities to attend to rural development in order to mitigate agricultural nitrous oxide emissions in China.

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Data availability

The datasets analyzed during the current study are available in the World Bank’s World Development Indicators repository, [https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators#].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Energy and Natural Resources, Sunyani, Ghana

    Paul Adjei Kwakwa

  2. Department of Economics, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Solomon Aboagye

  3. Department of Economics, University for Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana

    Hamdiyah Alhassan

  4. School of Management, Sir Padampat Singhania University, Bhatewar, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India

    Bright Akwasi Gyamfi

  5. Department of Business Administration Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Istanbul Gelisin University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Bright Akwasi Gyamfi

Authors
  1. Paul Adjei Kwakwa
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  2. Solomon Aboagye
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  3. Hamdiyah Alhassan
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  4. Bright Akwasi Gyamfi
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Contributions

Paul Adjei Kwakwa conceived the research idea and analyzed the data. Bright Akwasi Gyamfi did a review of literature with Hamdiyah Alhassan who also handled the methodology. Solomon Aboagye discussed the results and provided recommendations. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paul Adjei Kwakwa.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Responsible Editor: V.V.S.S. Sarma

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Kwakwa, P.A., Aboagye, S., Alhassan, H. et al. Reducing agricultural nitrous oxide emissions in China: the role of food production, forest cover, income, trade openness, and rural population. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 95773–95788 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-28990-z

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