Regional differences, convergence characteristics, and carbon peaking prediction of agricultural carbon emissions in China

Abstract

As a major agricultural country, agricultural carbon emissions in China are one of the key areas of focus for achieving China's "dual carbon" targets. This study utilizes the Dagum Gini coefficient, convergence models, and the ARIMA model to analyze the characteristics of agricultural carbon emissions in China's three major grain production functional zones. The results show that: (1) The agricultural carbon emissions in the national, main grain-production, and main grain-sales regions exhibit a fluctuating decreasing trend, while the agricultural carbon emissions in the grain production-sales balance region show a fluctuating increasing trend. The primary sources of agricultural carbon emissions are agricultural material inputs and enteric fermentation of ruminants. (2) The intra-regional differences in agricultural carbon emissions are the largest in the main grain-sales region, followed by the grain production-sales balance region, and the smallest in the main grain-production region. The contribution rate of inter-regional differences is the highest, making it the main source of overall disparity, while the contribution rate of hyperbolic density is the lowest. (3) Both the national level and the three major grain production functional zones exhibit conditional β-convergence in agricultural carbon emissions, indicating that the agricultural production in the national, main grain-production, and main grain-sales regions shows a "carbon neutral" characteristic, while the agricultural production in the grain production-sales balance region shows a "carbon peak" characteristic. (4) The agricultural carbon peak in China occurred in 2015, with a total carbon emission of 164.5 million tons. The main grain-production and main grain-sales regions have already reached carbon peak, while the grain production-sales balance region is expected to reach its carbon peak by 2030.

Keywords: Agricultural carbon emissions; Convergence; Prediction; Production functional zones; Regional disparities.