Agriculture development and CO(2) emissions nexus in Saudi Arabia

The agriculture sector may help to improve the environment of any country. The purpose of this research is to test the existence of environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis while keeping the energy consumption and agriculture share in income into account and analyze their effects on the CO(2) emissions per capita of Saudi Arabia. We test both symmetrical, asymmetrical and quadratic effects of agriculture sector on the CO(2) emissions. An inverted U-shaped relationship between gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and CO(2) emissions per capita is found. Hence, EKC hypothesis is validated with a turning point at GDP per capita of 77,068 constant Saudi Riyal. Further, a negative and significant effect of agriculture sector on the CO(2) emissions per capita has been found both in symmetrical and asymmetrical analyses. The magnitudes of effects of increasing and decreasing agriculture share are found statistically different on the CO(2) emissions, and rising agriculture share in GDP has larger effect than that of decreasing agriculture share. An inverted U-shaped relationship is also found between agriculture share in GDP and CO(2) emissions per capita with a turning point at 3.22% agriculture share in GDP.