Study On Decoupling Effect And Influencing Factors Of Agriculture Carbonin Northwest China

For a long time,China's resource-consumption-oriented economic development has caused serious environmental pollution.Global warming resulted by human activities has become the most serious environmental problem facing the world,and the carbon emissions generated by agriculture have accounted for a considerable proportion.China urgently needs to alter its extensive agricultural production and low-carbon agriculture has been carried out across the country in concert with the national response to climate change.Agricultural transformation has been boosted by promotion of low-carbon production concepts and low-carbon agricultural technologies,establishment of low-carbon agricultural projects.As the main agricultural producing area in China,north-west region actively undertakes the task of national carbon emission reduction and promotes the transformation of agricultural development model;due to the fragile ecology of this region,the challenges of the trade-off between agricultural development and ecological environmental protection are particularly acute.This study traced the theoretical origin of low-carbon agriculture from the theory of ecological agriculture and sustainable agriculture.The carbon sources and carbon sinks from agricultural production were analyzed from the material and energy exchange between input and output of agricultural production.Then a relatively complete agricultural carbon accounting model was constructed to estimate the agricultural carbon effects of the five northwestern provinces from 1995 to 2016,using macro data to explore time series changes of carbon effects in agricultural development.Based on decoupling and coupling model,this study evaluated the development of low-carbon agriculture from the relationship between carbon emissions(carbon sinks)and economic growth,and analyzed the influencing factors using LMDI model decomposition to identify the influential direction and extent of these factors.Next,the identified key technical factor was further incorporated into the household level,in order to deeply analyze the low-carbon technology adoption behavior of farmer.The above analysis aimed at better realizing the “carbon decoupling” of agriculture,thus effectively promoting the development of low-carbon agriculture.Results have shown that agricultural carbon emissions and carbon sinks in the Northwest have increased rapidly in the last 22 years.The main source of carbon emissions was animal husbandry,but the proportion has declined.Among the increase of carbon sinks,crop carbon sinks accounted for the highest proportion,but economic forest carbon sinks grew faster.Combined with economic growth,agricultural carbon emissions and economic growth in the northwest region were in a weak decoupling state.The fluctuation of the coupling coefficient between agricultural net carbon sinks and economic output has gradually narrowed,which has stabilized in a weak coupling state in recent years,so in general agricultural economic development and environment were in a benign interaction.Among the five provinces;Shaanxi Province had the best decoupling effect,and Xinjiang had the best coupling state.After further five-factor decomposing analysis of both decoupling and coupling effects,it is found that technological progress was the most important.Industrial structure promoted decoupling and inhibited coupling,but to a lesser extent.The contribution of agricultural economic development level to decoupling and coupling was stable,while the effect of urbanization level and agricultural population size on decoupling and coupling was opposite.In terms of farmers,their behavioral attitudes have the greatest impact on their willingness to adopt low-carbon production technologies,followed by subjective norms and perceived behavioral control.