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The purpose of this paper is to estimate shadow prices of agricultural carbon emissions produced by agricultural inputs, rice paddy and burning crop residue, and to explore the impact of cropping pattern on marginal abatement cost (MAC).

The shadow price of agricultural carbon emissions is estimated by applying directional distance function and non-parametric methods.

The estimated shadow price of agricultural carbon emissions ranges from 6.78 to 557.83 yuan/ton, and the average value is 62.50 yuan/ton (or $10.18/ton). The MAC value varies in different provinces and years. The regional difference of MAC shows a decreasing trend during the investigation period. Cropping pattern shows a significant negative impact on agricultural MAC. A 1 percent decrease of rice proportion leads to a 0.31 percent increase in MAC value. This implies that the higher the proportion of rice is, the lower the economic cost to reduce agricultural carbon emissions would be.

It is feasible to draw up appropriate mechanisms for the allocation of emission reduction responsibilities according to conditions in various regions, with emphasis on the local cropping patterns. There is a trade-off between reducing carbon emission and increasing crop yields.

This study calculates agricultural MAC by using the shadow price approach, taking agricultural carbon emissions as undesired environmental output. The study also provides a reference emission right price and provides guidance to make use of cropping structure adjustment and optimization for exploring the emission reduction strategy.

This study aims to fill the gap in income-environment literature by adding agricultural contribution to the nexus. The authors investigate the short-run and long-run impact of agricultural contribution, renewable energy consumption, real income, trade liberalisation and urbanisation on carbon emissions for a balanced panel of five South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries spanning the period 1990-2013.

Pedroni and Kao cointegration techniques have been used to test the existence of long-run relationship between the variables. The directions of causal relationships have been verified using Granger causality tests. Further, the long-run parameters of the baseline equation have been estimated by using the fully modified ordinary least squares, the technique developed by Pedroni, (2001a) for heterogeneous cointegrated panels.

The result reveals that agricultural contribution and renewable energy consumption improve environmental quality in the long run, while urbanisation and per capita real income degrade it. The study did not find any evidence of “pollution heaven hypothesis” in the selected countries. The Granger causality tests confirm bidirectional causality between carbon emissions and income and between carbon emissions and urbanisation. In addition, there is unidirectional causality running from agricultural contribution to renewable energy consumption.

This is the only study to investigate the role of agriculture sector in carbon mitigation from a panel of South Asian economies. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is also the first study to test the applicability of “pollution heaven hypothesis” for SAARC countries.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the heterogeneity and correlations of agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions among provinces in China, and then policy implications are proposed.

After agricultural GHG accounting and a pre-analysis of inter-provincial heterogeneity, improved gravity model and the Social Network Analysis (SNA) methods are introduced to construct the network, being carried out from three aspects of the whole network, individual provincial characteristics and cluster analysis.

(1) There are significant regional variations in agricultural GHG scale among provinces owing to the layout of agricultural production, and the temporal trends show that the direction and speed of agricultural GHG scale change vary among provinces; (2) In terms of inter-provincial correlations, there exists a complex spatial network of agricultural GHG among provinces, which tends to be more complex, intensive and stable, while the status of the provinces in the network also has gradually become more balanced. All provinces played their respective roles in the four clusters of the network with agricultural layout and comparative advantages, and the distribution has continuously optimized.

The inter-provincial network characteristics of agricultural GHG emissions and its evolution have practical implications for differentiated and coordinated agricultural GHG reduction policies at the provincial levels.

This paper innovatively study inter-provincial agricultural GHG correlations in China with the SNA methods used to study economic and social connections in the past. There is some originality in the introduction of network theory and application of the SNA methods, which can provide some reference for researches in similar fields.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and investigate the electricity consumption and production and its linkage to economic growth in Pakistan.

The authors used an augmented Dickey–Fuller unit root test to check the stationarity of the variables, while an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach and causality test were applied to investigate the variables long-term association with the economic growth.

The study results show that electricity consumption in the agriculture, commercial and industrial sector has significant association with economic growth, while electricity consumption in the household and street lights demonstrate a non-significant association with the economic growth. Furthermore, results also exposed that electricity production from coal, hydroelectric, natural gas, nuclear and oil sources have significant association with the economic growth of Pakistan.

This study made a contribution to the literature regarding electricity consumption and production with economic growth in Pakistan by using an ARDL bounds testing approach and causality test. This study provides a guideline to the government of Pakistan that possible steps are needed to improve the electricity production and supply to fulfill the country demand.

Constructing a low-carbon agriculture (LCA) park is considered an effective means to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in developing countries. This study aims to explore the effectiveness of integrated low-carbon agricultural technologies based on evidence from a pilot LCA experiment in Shanghai, China, from 2008 to 2011.

Integrated low-carbon technologies in an agricultural park were adopted to reduce GHG emissions. Reduced emissions and net economic benefits were calculated by comparing emissions before and after the implementation of the experiment.

Results show that the low-carbon agricultural park experiment markedly reduced GHG emissions. This outcome can be attributed to the integrated technologies adopted in the experiment, including the reuse and recycle of resources, control of environmental pollution and GHG emissions and improvement of economic efficiency and social benefit. All the technologies adopted are already available and mature, thus indicating the great potential of LCA to reduce GHG emissions despite the lack of advanced technologies. However, supporting policies may be necessary to motivate private interests in LCA because of the considerable starting investments.

Previous macro-level and policy studies on LCA are based on knowledge from experimental studies, which typically specify environmental conditions to explore solely the effects of one low-carbon technology. Practically, integrating several low-carbon technologies in one experiment may be more effective, particularly for extensive agriculture, in developing countries. The effectiveness of integrated technologies is insufficiently discussed in the literature. Therefore, this study explores how effective integrated feasible LCA technologies can be in terms of both emission reduction and economic benefits based on the data obtained from an experiment in Shanghai, China.

Bioenergy is a key component of climate change mitigation strategies aiming at low stabilization. Its versatility and capacity to generate negative emissions when combined with carbon capture and storage add degrees of freedom to the timing of emission reductions. This paper aims to explore the robustness of a bioenergy-based mitigation strategy by addressing several dimensions of uncertainty on biomass potential, bioenergy use and induced land use change emissions.

Different mitigation scenarios were explored by two different energy-economy optimization models coupled to the same land use model, which provides a common basis for the second generation bioenergy dynamics in the two energy-economy models.

Using bioenergy is found to be a robust mitigation strategy as demonstrated by high biomass shares in primary energy demand in both models and in all mitigation scenarios.

A variety of possible storylines about future uses of biomass exist. The comparison of the technology choices preferred by the applied models helps understand how future emission reductions can be achieved under alternative storylines.

The presented comparison-based assessment goes beyond other comparison studies because both energy-economy models are coupled to the same land use model.

In order to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it is essential that all industry sectors have the appropriate knowledge and tools to contribute. This includes agriculture, which is considered to contribute about a third of emissions globally. This paper reports on one such tool: IMPACCT: Integrated Management oPtions for Agricultural Climate Change miTigation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

IMPACCT focuses on GHGs, carbon sequestration and associated mitigation options. However, it also attempts to include information on economic and other environmental impacts in order to provide a more holistic perspective. The model identifies mitigation options, likely economic impacts and any synergies and trade-offs with other environmental objectives. The model has been applied on 22 case study farms in seven Member States.

The tool presents some useful concepts for developing carbon calculators in the future. It has highlighted that calculators need to evolve from simply calculating emissions to identifying cost-effective and integrated emissions reduction options.

IMPACCT has potential to become an effective means of provided targeted guidance, as part of a broader knowledge transfer programme based on an integrated suite of guidance, tools and advice delivered via different media.

IMPACCT is a new model that demonstrates how to take a more integrated approach to mitigating GHGs on farms across Europe. It is a holistic carbon calculator that presents mitigation options in the context other environmental and economic objectives in the search for more sustainable methods of food production.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the link between climate change and agricultural growth in Malaysia, and pursue three sub‐objectives: to determine and analyze the link between agricultural growth rate and climate change score; to determine and analyze the link between per capita CO₂ emissions and agricultural production index; and to determine and analyze the link between per capita agricultural production index and per capita CO₂ emissions.

Relevant time series data compiled from several online sources including the Germanwatch, Ministry of Finance, Malaysia, and the United Nations database were used. The data for agricultural growth rate and climate change score for Malaysia were found to be available only for the four recent years from 2006 to 2009. The data for other variables such as per capita agricultural production index and per capita CO₂ emissions have been standardized covering the period from 1990 to 2004. The ordinary least squares methods were employed to estimate the parameters in the three linear regression models.

The empirical results of the study reveal three important observations for Malaysia: the link between agricultural growth rate and climate change score is proven to be negative, but insignificant (p>0.1); the link between per capita CO₂ emissions and agricultural production index is found to be direct and highly significant (p<0.01); and the link between per capita agricultural production index and per capita CO₂ emissions is proven to be positive and highly significant (p<0.01). Also, an increasing level of per capita CO₂ emissions in the country is proven to have both detrimental and beneficial effects on its agricultural growth. For instance, agricultural growth in Malaysia is found to produce significant effects on climate change, primarily through the production and release of CO₂.

The paper recommends that the two‐way link between climate change and agricultural growth depends on the balance of the effects and that an in‐depth assessment of such effects might help the appropriate authority to anticipate the effects more accurately. The paper will be useful to researchers wishing to conduct research and develop models on the nexus between climate change and agriculture.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the suitability of free carbon calculators aimed at the agricultural industry, for use in greenhouse gas (GHG) emission benchmarking, using the European dairy industry as an example.

Carbon calculators which were claimed to be applicable to European dairy farms were identified and tested using six production scenarios based on data from real European farms supplemented using published literature. The resulting GHG emission estimates, together with estimates apportioned using three functional units, were then compared to determine the robustness of the benchmarking results.

It was found that although there was a degree of agreement between the seven identified carbon calculators in terms of benchmarking total farm emissions, once a suitable functional unit was applied little agreement remained. Tools often ranked farms in different orders, thereby calling into question the robustness of benchmarking in the studied sector.

The scenario-based approach taken has identified issues liable to result in a lack of benchmarking robustness within this sector; however, there remains considerable scope to evaluate these findings in the field, both within this sector and others in the agricultural industry.

The results suggest that there are significant hurdles to overcome if GHG emission benchmarking is to aid in driving forward the environmental performance of the dairy industry. In addition, eco-labelling foods based on GHG benchmarking may be of questionable value.

At a time when environmental benchmarking is of increasing importance, this paper seeks to evaluate its applicability to sectors in which there is considerable scope for variation in the results obtained.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and describe key economic and policy‐related issues with regard to terrestrial C sequestration and provide an overview of the economics of C sequestration on agricultural soils in the USA.

Recent economic literature on carbon sequestration was reviewed to gather insights on the role of agriculture in greenhouse gas emissions mitigation. Results from the most salient studies were presented in an attempt to highlight the general consensus on producer‐level responses to C sequestration incentives and the likely mechanisms used to facilitate C sequestration activities on agricultural soils.

The likely economic potential of agriculture to store soil C appears to be considerably less than the technical potential. Terrestrial C sequestration is a readily implementable option for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and can provide mitigation comparable in cost to current abatement options in other industries. Despite considerable research to date, many aspects of terrestrial C sequestration in the USA are not well understood.

The paper provides a useful synopsis of the terms and issues associated with C sequestration, and serves as an informative reference on the economics of C sequestration that will be useful as the USA debates future greenhouse gas emissions mitigation policies.