Spatial-Temporal Evolution, Decoupling Effect and Performance Evaluation of China’s Agricultural Carbon Emissions

The temporal characteristics, spatial pattern, evolution mode, decoupling relationship and performance evaluation of China’s agricultural carbon emissions were analyzed scientifically, so as to provide a basis for helping China achieve the goal of “carbon peaking and carbon neutrality” and strengthen the construction of an agricultural power.

This study constructed an index system for assessing agricultural carbon emissions and agricultural carbon emission performance in China, and measured the systematic measurement index of agricultural carbon emissions in Chinese provinces from 2007 to 2020. The Kernel density estimation and standardized ellipsoidal visualization analysis were used to analyze the regional distribution characteristics and spatial-temporal evolution trends of agricultural carbon emissions, Tapio model was used to examine the decoupling relationship between examining agricultural carbon emissions and economic growth, and the super-efficient SBM model with non-expected output was constructed to report the agricultural carbon emission performance and decomposition efficiency of China and the seven economic regions.

From 2007 to 2020, the overall agricultural carbon emissions in China showed an “inverted U-shaped” curve of rising and then declining, with obvious regional differences and stable distribution of ranks. The eastern region had the best emission reduction effect, the central region had a “bipolar” distribution, and the western region had a higher pressure of emission reduction, with the overall spatial pattern dominated by the northeast-southwest direction, and tended to be decentralized to the northeast and northwest. China’s agricultural carbon emissions and agricultural economic development have been maintained at a weakly decoupled level and have made a breakthrough to a strongly decoupled level, which could be divided into two stages: a stable period (2007-2016) and a breakthrough period (2017-2020). The assessment of agricultural carbon emission performance showed a trend of “rapid rise - slow decline - steady improvement”, with the Great Northwest Economic Zone and the Northern Coastal Economic Zone in the first and last positions, respectively, and the contribution of technological change in agricultural production (TC) was more prominent than that of technical efficiency change (EC).

With 2017 as the inflection point, China’s agricultural carbon emissions as a whole showed a decreasing trend, and the agricultural economic development as a whole was gradually getting rid of the dependence on agricultural carbon emissions, with different agricultural bases and different emission reduction targets in each region and province. It was necessary to reasonably plan the scale and internal structure of agricultural comparative advantage industries according to local conditions, reasonably select the resource endowment production characteristics of industries in the region. At the same time, we should pay attention to technology iteration and updating in the agricultural economic development and energy conservation and emission reduction in the role of promoting, taking into account the regional ecological benefits and economic benefits.