Land Use Policy Recommendations——Based on Empirical Analysis of The Effect of Agricultural Land Expansion on Greenhouse Gas Emission

Abstract

Agricultural activities emit about 10-12% greenhouse gases each year. Moreover, the total amount is on the rise, which can significantly contribute to global warming.  To get governments to pay more attention to greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural activities, so that the necessary regulations can be implemented. This paper studies the relationship between agricultural land expansion and greenhouse gas emissions. My initial hypothesis was that ceteris paribus, the agricultural land expansion would cause a rise in greenhouse gas emissions. I obtained 25 years of data for 12 countries from the World Development Indicators Database of the World Bank. And created a panel data frame. The variables exist in it are: Total greenhouse gas emissions (kt of CO2 equivalent), Energy use (kg of oil equivalent per capita), Alternative and nuclear energy (% of total energy use), Agricultural land (% of land area), GDP per capita (current US$). In order to cope with the possible heteroscedasticity problem in the regression, several of the variables were processed logarithms. This paper used a Two-way Fixed effect model which controls fixed effects from both cross section and time. The explained variable is log (GHG emissions), and the explanatory variables are log (energy use per capita), log (GDP per capita), clean energy using rate, and percentage of agricultural land in total land. However due to the presence of multicollinearity, log (GDP per capita) was removed. This paper also tested the autocorrelation and used the Cochrane-Orcutt Iterative Process to estimate the autocorrelation coefficient to transform all variables so that solve the autocorrelation issue. The final regression model is as follows: ln(Greenhouse Gases emission)=   + 1.06*ln(Energy use per capita) – 0.009*(Alternative and nuclear energy % of total energy use) + 0.0074*(Agricultural land % of land area).   = . The overall F-test of this model is significant, and the individual t-tests of the coefficients of each variable are all significant. R²=92.18, adjR²=91.04. This shows that the explanatory power of the model is strong. This outcome is consistent with my initial hypothesis that agricultural land expansion does lead to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. The other two coefficients are also consistent with our common sense. This result can help governments to decide on the planning of land use. If the current amount of energy used and the types of energy used do not change, a country develops agriculture, it will inevitably lead to more greenhouse gas emissions. More Importantly, it is not like industrial manufacture, normally there are few regulations and policies on agricultural GHG emissions. But the quantitative results of the model tell us that as agriculture expands, it is necessary for the government to implement regulations and policies on it.