The impact of agricultural intensification on carbon dioxide emissions and energy consumption: A comparative study of developing and developed nations

Abstract

Energy consumption has become a necessity in today’s world, and economies in developing nations cannot thrive without it. Countries with less developed economies face the same challenges of achieving sustained economic growth as those with more advanced economies. Herein, we examine the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis by looking at the interplay between GDP growth, energy use, agricultural output, and the effects of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. From 1991 to 2016, we used panel and quantile regression analyses to compare emissions in nine developing countries with those in 13 developed countries. There is the beginning of a reverse U-shaped relationship between agricultural energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, the verified EKC hypothesis paves the way for a watershed moment in the progress of industrialized nations’ economies. The estimated results of agriculture have a favorable impact on CO2 emissions by 15.16 percent but a negative influence of 2.92 percent on CO2 emissions from using liquid fuels, leading to more severe environmental deterioration. Additionally, in developing countries, feed cropping, deforestation, biomass burning, and deep soil and cropping all have detrimental consequences on the ecosystem. There is a negative correlation between CO2 emissions and economic growth in developing countries and their energy consumption. Although the EKC hypothesis for CO2 emissions was rejected at lower quantiles, it was validated for Qatar, Canada, China, and other high-emitting economies according to the empirical estimation of quantile regression. The findings of this study have important policy implications for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, suggesting that policymakers account for the stage of economic growth currently being experienced when formulating measures to cut energy use and protect the environment. Possible solutions to mitigate environmental degradation include enactment of policies to reduce energy consumption.

Comparative Analysis of the Impact of Policy Uncertainty, Agricultural Output, and Renewable Energy on Environmental Sustainability

“…The coefficient values increase at higher quantiles, indicating that agricultural output per worker adversely affects ES in developed economies at higher distribution levels. This GHG emission increasing impact on agriculture output in developed economies might be due to the reliance of these economies on fossil fuels to meet the energy demands in the agriculture sector [46]. Moreover, increased agriculture production warrants extended land use, more use of fertilizers and aquaculture production, and investments in road infrastructures.…”

“…For agriculture output, α 2 > 0 or α 2 < 0 is expected. There is enough evidence of α 2 > 0, as the studies such as [42,[46][47][48] show that agricultural sector growth causes an increase in GHG emissions. However, there is also some evidence of α 2 > 0, as agricultural growth can reduce GHG emissions [49,50].…”

Catch-up growth with alpha and beta decoupling and their relationships between CO2 emissions by GDP, population, energy production, and consumption

“…The U.S. must accelerate renewable energy adoption, energy efficiency, and carbon capture and storage to reduce energy-related CO 2 emissions, according to the research [ 112 ]. As a developing nation, China is primarily the leader in energy consumption; but its economic growth and energy consumption have been supported by the pilferage of resources that were formerly global [ 72 , 113 ]. This accomplishment has a dual purpose: not only does it furnish China with a solid theoretical foundation, but it also sheds light on prospective policies regarding the development of energy on a worldwide scale [ 114 , 115 ].…”

“…As a result, individuals evaluated the United States, China, Thailand, and Romania through the lens of numerous prior studies. In order to enhance comprehension of the correlation between escalating energy consumption and economic expansion, scholars have investigated decoupling across multiple domains and employing diverse methodologies, encompassing energy production and consumption [ 19 , [67] , [68] , [69] , [70] , [71] , [72] ]. In this study, the A&BD method is employed to investigate the Topia decomposition of energy generation and consumption.…”

Research on the Characteristics and Influencing Factors of Carbon Transfer Based on Value Chain in China

“…The issue of carbon emission reduction has been emphasized and concerned by countries around the world, so research on carbon emissions is being enriched. The main carbon emission accounting methods are the input-output method and the carbon emission coe cient method, and the research area includes all industrial sectors (Wang et al, 2023) as well as individual sectors such as industry (Liu et al, 2023), agriculture (Zhao and Du, 2023), tourism (Chandra et al, 2023), etc., and the scope of the research involves the global (Sun et al, 2023; Xu et al, 2024), regional (Saiful et al, 2023;Wei et al, 2023), national (Tsvetkov et al, 2024;, provincial/state (Peng et al, 2023;Pouliasis et al, 2024), and city (Xing et al, 2024) levels at the macro scale, and is speci c to a certain enterprise (Laurens and Thijs, 2024; Long and Zhang, 2024) or a certain piece of farmland (Dlamini et al, 2022;Shackelford et al, 2019) at the micro scale. In this paper, we will account for the carbon emissions of 42 industrial sectors in China based on China's inter-regional input-output tables.…”