Regional Disparities in the Level of Agri-Environmental Vulnerability in Asia: A Country-Level Analysis

This study examine the spatio-temporal differences in agri-environmental vulnerability among the 42 Asian countries by applying the principal component analysis method. Therefore, to calculate the composite index of agri-environmental vulnerability for the selected countries, the secondary data on seven agri-environmental indicators (related to pre-and post-agricultural production activities) were extracted from the FAOSTAT and World Bank databases for the year 2010 and 2020. The results from the analysis described that during both periods, countries with large GDP and population size like, 'China' and 'India' were highly vulnerable, while countries with small GDP and population size like, 'Bhutan' and 'Laos' were least vulnerable due to their organic farming and green economy policies. Lastly, findings from the binary logistic regression analysis also indicate that the high-GDP countries were growing at the cost of their environmental degradation, which should be controlled logically by population optimization and the fair adoption of organic farming practices for a sustainable future.本研究采用主成分分析法（Principal Component Analysis），探究了42个亚洲国家农业环境脆弱性的时空差异。为此，为测算所选样本国的农业环境脆弱性综合指数，本研究从FAOSTAT及世界银行数据库中提取了2010年与2020年的7项农业环境指标（涵盖农业生产前后相关活动）的二手数据。分析结果显示，在两个观测时段内，中国、印度等GDP与人口规模庞大的国家农业环境脆弱性较高；而不丹、老挝等GDP与人口规模较小的国家则因推行有机农业与绿色经济政策，脆弱性最低。此外，二元逻辑回归分析的结果还表明，高GDP国家的经济增长是以环境退化为代价的，为实现可持续发展，需通过人口优化与公平推广有机农业实践对该问题进行合理管控。