Is there an inverted U-shaped curve? Empirical analysis of the Environmental Kuznets Curve in agrochemicals

Abstract

As the largest contributor to water impairment, agriculture-related pollution has attracted the attention of scientists as well as policy makers, and quantitative information is being sought to focus and advance the policy debate. This study applies the panel unit root, heterogeneous panel cointegration, and panel-based dynamic ordinary least squares to investigate the Environmental Kuznets Curve on environmental issues resulting from use of agricultural synthetic fertilizer, pesticide, and film for 31 provincial economies in mainland China from 1989 to 2009. The empirical results indicate a positive long-run co-integrated relationship between the environmental index and real GDP per capita. This relationship takes on the inverted U-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curve, and the value of the turning point is approximately 10,000–13,000, 85,000–89,000 and over 160,000 CNY, for synthetic fertilizer nitrogen indicator, fertilizer phosphorus indicator and pesticide indicator, respectively. At present, China is subject to tremendous environmental pressure and should assign more importance to special agriculture-related environmental issues.

Keywords

Environmental Kuznets Curve / agrochemical / China

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the State Basic Science Key Project of China (No. 2007FY110300), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41271556 and 41301642), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Funded Project (No. 2013M541026), and the Golda Meir Fellowship. This paper was finally finished while the first author was a Fellow at the Department of Geography, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The authors would like to appreciate Professor Eran Feitelson and Ms Rachel Friedman for their guidance and comments.

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