The significance of environmental taxes in agriculture

Abstract

As the productivity of agrarian ecosystem continues to grow, the changes in agricultural production increasingly lead to environmental pollution growth. Agriculture is one of the economic activities that can be influenced by environmental taxes. Environmental taxes, regulating economic and environmental interactions, can be treated as a fiscal measure, which can regulate the harmful impact on the environment, help rationalize the use of natural resources, and provide additional income to the state. The revenue collected from these fees may be appointed to sustainable economy, which is based on nature conservation, cleaner production, etc. Agriculture can be referred to as the greatest consumer of nature and natural resources that, in this case, causes negative environmental externalities, which could be reduced with the help of environmental taxes. The growth of environmental pollution and the irrational use of natural resources have become intractable global problems, and environmental taxes are one of the most important fiscal instruments of negative environmental impact reduction, sustainable economic and social development of countries. The aim of the study is to analyze the significance of the environmental taxes in the pollution reduction issue through the analysis of the cases in the European Union countries following the disclosure of agricultural pollution problems. Pollution problems are associated with the use of natural resources. This link is revealed by the ecologic footprint term. It describes the total area of productive land and water ecosystems that is required for the supply of natural resources and pollution absorption. The study found that greenhouse gases in the agricultural sector in recent years have tended to increase. The results show that the ecological deficit exceeds the ecological reserve.[...]