The effect of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions reduction policies: evidence from the middle and lower basin of Yangtze River, China

Abstract

To achieve energy conservation and the reduction of agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the Ministry of Agriculture of the People’s Republic of China in 2015 made Zhejiang Province the first national low-carbon and circular agriculture pilot province. Specialized policies were conducted in Zhejiang Province for reducing agricultural GHG emissions. In this study, we collected the GHG emission sources data of each city in Hubei and Zhejiang Provinces and calculated the estimated agricultural GHG emission of each city from 2011 to 2020 by using the recommended method from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Following this, we evaluated the impact of the pilot policies on the agricultural GHG emission in the treatment province, Zhejiang, by implementing the difference-in-differences (DID) analysis. The empirical results showed that after considering variables such as income level, rural employment, and average power of agricultural machinery, the agricultural GHG emissions in Zhejiang Province decreased significantly after 2015, compared with Hubei Province, driven by the low-carbon and circular agriculture pilot policies. Furthermore, agricultural GHG emissions can be effectively reduced by increasing national financial investment and administrative orders; however, excessive administrative orders and forced transformation of the agricultural system are likely to harm farmers’ interests in the process of policy implementation.

Can a pursuit of productivity be reconciled with sustainable practices in small-scale farming? Evidence from central and eastern Europe

“…However, a particular large reduction could be implemented in non-EU members, such as Serbia and Moldova. Meanwhile, public policies have not been very effective in stimulating the provision of PG, in contrast to recent studies of small farms from other areas of the world (Liang et al, 2022). There is still room for improvement to at least double the PG outcome.…”