Unraveling the interplay between food security, agriculture, trade policy, and energy consumption: An environmental sustainability insight

Food security, energy dynamics, and environmental sustainability represent some of the most critical global challenges in the contemporary world. This research undertakes the intricate task of deciphering the multidimensional impacts of food security, agricultural practices, trade policy, and energy consumption on the evolution of greenhouse gas emissions in South Korea spanning the period of 1990–2020. Employing a sophisticated autoregressive distributed lag approach, this study strives to extract both short-run and long-run interpretations. Moreover, the integration of a vector error correction model serves to illuminate the underpinnings of causal relationships. The findings reveal that nonrenewable energy consumption and food security impose a deleterious effect on environmental sustainability, predominantly via their enhancement of greenhouse gas emissions. In contrast, renewable energy consumption, agriculture, and trade policy emerge as key drivers of environmental sustainability due to their potential to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. The vector error correction model corroborates the existence of short-term bilateral causality among food security, energy consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, agriculture and trade policy display a unidirectional influence in the short term, effectively reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This causal nexus lends credence to the significant implications of short-term agricultural and trade policy decisions on greenhouse gas emissions. The study ultimately underscores the imperative role of government intervention in South Korea in fostering energy-efficient and environmentally responsible strategies for greenhouse gas emissions reduction and enhanced environmental sustainability.