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Causal relationship between agricultural production and carbon dioxide emissions in selected emerging economies

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Abstract

Continuous threat posed by climate change caused by carbon dioxide emission has reignited global advocacy to confront its negative ramification with the greatest possible firmness. Global food security and agriculture face major challenges under climate change as a result of the potential negative effect of production and implementation of sectoral action to limit global warming. Overall, agricultural greenhouse emissions continue to rise and the analysis of superior data on emissions from farming, livestock, and fisheries can help countries identify opportunities to contemporaneously reduce emissions and address their food security. This study seeks to contribute to the recent literature by examining the causal relationship between agriculture production and carbon dioxide emissions in selected emerging economies for the period 1971 to 2013. The study, therefore, disaggregated agriculture production into crop production index and livestock production index to explicate the distinct and to find individual variable contribution to carbon dioxide emissions. By using FMOLS and DOLS, empirical results indicate that 1% increase in economic growth, crop production index, and livestock production index will cause a proportional increase in carbon dioxide emission by 17%, 28%, and 28% correspondingly, while 1% increase in energy consumption and population improves the environment of emerging economies. The direction of causality among the variables was, accordingly, examined using PMG estimator. Potentially, for emerging countries to achieve Sustainable Development Goal of ensuring zero hunger for their citizenry requires the need to alter their farming production techniques and also adopt agricultural technology method, which is more environmentally friendly.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Korean National Research Foundation Grant, funded by the Korean Government [NRF-2014SIA2027622] and supported in part by the National Science Foundation of China under grants 71471076, 71171099, 71373818, and 71201071 and by the Joint Research of the NSFC-NRF Scientific Cooperation Program under grant 71411170250 and by the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education under grant 20123227110011. This work was also sponsored by the Qing Lan Project of Jiangsu Province, and Jiangsu University Top Talents and Training Project.

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Correspondence to Kingsley Appiah.

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Appiah, K., Du, J. & Poku, J. Causal relationship between agricultural production and carbon dioxide emissions in selected emerging economies. Environ Sci Pollut Res 25, 24764–24777 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-2523-z

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