The Role Of Livestock In China’s Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Under Double Carbon Target

Climate change is a common challenge facing mankind,and reducing anthropogenic emissions of Greenhouse Gases is essential to mitigate global warming.Carbon dioxide,methane and nitrous oxide in the atmosphere are the first,second and third greenhouse gases that affect global warming respectively.Slowing down the emissions of these three gases can significantly alleviate global warming in a long time.At present,researches on Greenhouse Gases mitigation mainly focus on carbon dioxide,while few researches on methane and nitrous oxide.By analyzing the data of China’s livestock production and emissions of methane and nitrous oxide from 1961 to 2020,this thesis found that the total emissions of China’s livestock reached its peak in 1996,though fluctuated slightly,basically in a decreasing trend afterward.The emissions of cattle and pig started to decrease since 1996 and 2012 respectively,while those of goat,sheep and chicken remains increasing all the period.Meanwhile the produciton of milk and pork began to decline after reaching the peak in 2014 and 2015 respectively,while that of beef,mutton,goat’s milk,sheep’s milk,chicken and eggs basically shows an increasing trend.EKC model is applied to estimate the relationship between the production of livestock and their Greenhouse Gases emissions.The result shows a significant correlation between protein equivalent of animal products and their Greenhouse Gases emissions in China,which conforms to the general law of the inverted "U" shape of the environmental Kuznets curve.With China’s data from 1990 to 2020,this thesis tries to analyse the effects of six factors including animal product protein equivalent,livestock carrying capacity per unit of agricultural land,the proportion of agricultural added value to GDP,cultivated land area,urbanization level and Engel’s coefficient of residents on Greenhouse Gases emissions.The result shows that with the increase of cultivated land area,urbanization level and the decrease of the proportion of agricultural added value to GDP and Engel’s Coefficient,the goal of livestock mitigation will be attained.Still,the rise of livestock rearing intensity and livestock products aggravates Greenhouse Gases emissions.