Study On The Impact Of Green Finance On Agricultural Carbon Emission In China

Global warming is causing carbon emissions to receive increasing attention worldwide,among which agricultural carbon emissions are the main source of carbon emissions.Although China has put in place a number of institutional mechanisms and important measures,while significant progress has been made in preventing and controlling pollution,saving energy,reducing emissions and responding to global climate change,the problem of pollution persists in a context of rapid economic and social development,and the conflict between people and the ecological environment persists.With the increasing development of modern financial industry,its role in the allocation of economic resources is becoming more and more prominent.It should play an active role in fighting pollution and protecting the environment.Therefore,the concept of green finance came into being.Since the 18 th CPC National Congress,relevant green finance governance documents have been consistently issued to continuously promote the development of green finance.Theoretically,improving the development level of green finance will help to reduce agricultural carbon emissions,but the specific path and whether it has effectively reduced agricultural carbon emissions in the process of practice are the problems that need to be solved urgently in the current research.This paper uses provincial panel data from 2011 to 2020 to study the relationship between the level of green finance development and agricultural carbon emissions through a general panel regression model and a mediating effects model.The empirical results show that:(1)green finance in general has a negative relationship with agricultural carbon emissions,i.e.green finance reduces agricultural carbon emissions.(2)The impact of green finance on carbon emissions from agriculture is significantly negative in the eastern,central and western regions,with the largest impact of green finance in the east,then in the central region and weakest in the west.(3)The four dimensions of green finance-green credits,green insurance,green securities and green investments-have different impacts on the carbon intensity of agriculture,with green credit,green insurance and green investment having a significant green credit,green insurance and green investment have a significant negative impact on agricultural carbon emissions,while green securities do not have a significant impact on agricultural carbon emissions.(4)The effect of green finance on carbon emission reduction in agriculture is significant under different degrees of marketization,and the effect of carbon emission reduction is more obvious in regions with higher degrees of marketization.(5)Both technological progress and industrial structure optimization are positively influenced by green finance,which in turn reduces agricultural carbon emissions as a mediating variable,and the effect of industrial structure optimization as a mediating variable is more obvious than that of technological progress.Based on the above findings,the main policy recommendations set out in this paper are as follows :(1)accelerating the process of building a high-quality green financial system;(2)optimising the green financial landscape;(3)improving the green financial market system;and(4)improving the impacts of the technological and industrial structure of green financial development.