Environmental quality outlook of the leading oil producers and urbanized African states

This study seeks to explore the links between energy consumption and environmental quality in the wake of rapid urbanization in Africa with empirical insights from the cases of Libya, Morocco, Nigeria, Algeria, Angola, Egypt, and South Africa. These countries aside from being among the largest economies; are also among the leading energy producers and the most urbanized economies that emit the most carbon dioxide on the continent. Based on the Pooled Mean Group (PMG) panel ARDL estimator, the dynamics nexus between the variables was estimated vis-à-vis the short-run and long-run coefficients using relevant sample data between 1990 and 2015. The study further examines the channels of causality between the variables while also testing for the validity of the popular Environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis for the panel of countries. The results confirm that the rising level of energy use significantly exacerbates the level of carbon emission among the countries in the study while growing urbanization significantly creates a negative impact on carbon emission. In addition, an increase in per capita income improves the environmental quality but the doubling of income per capita triggers environmental degradation, thus invalidating the EKC hypothesis in the examined panel economies. In essence, these countries have not reached the supposed turning point at which income growth can yield desirable emission mitigation effects. Following the findings, essential recommendations are provided for policymakers in the main text.© The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Energy transition and environmental quality prospects in leading emerging economies : The role of environmental-related technological innovation

The world has witnessed a significant rise in greenhouse gas emissions since the end of the 20th century as several economies begin to emerge into industrial hubs and manufacturing giants across the globe. Thus, in the wake of global interest in clean energy development and campaign for sustainable climate and ecosystem, the role of the emerging countries in the debate is unarguably vital and demanding. Importantly, this study seeks to examine the commitment of the leading emerging countries (E7) of Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, and Turkey to energy transition and carbon-neutral 2050. We employ the cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lag approach that accounts for potential country-specific factors to examine the role of environmental-related technological innovations (ERT) in achieving climate neutrality in the E7 over the period from 1992 to 2018. Notably, the findings revealed that a 1 percent increase in ERT yields ~0.33% (short-run) and ~ 0.17% (long-run) reductions in carbon emission, thus suggesting that the E7 economies could be heading toward environmental sustainability with the application of ERT. Additionally, the result revealed that the application of ERT in the energy utilization profile significantly reduced the undesirable impact of primary energy utilization. However, the result showed that such an impact is not enough to trigger a transition to environmentally desirable cleaner energy that could mitigate carbon emissions. This is because the larger share of the E7 countries' primary energy utilization is from conventional and/or non-renewable energy sources. The environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is also validated.© 2022 The Authors. Sustainable Development published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Do natural resources and economic components exhibit differential quantile environmental effects?

In view of the resource curse assumption, the environmen-tal aspects of resource utilization are arguably posing moredangers to human existence. In the Middle East and NorthAfrica (MENA) region, the region that holds more than 60%and 50% of the world's oil and gas reserves respectively,the need to examine the contribution of natural resourcesto environmental quality among other factors cannot beoveremphasized. By leveraging on the novelty of observingthe differential impact of natural resources and other eco-nomic components such as income and primary energy utili-zations across the quantiles of carbon emission, this studyimplements the quantile regression approach alongsideother relevant techniques to analyze data between 1990and 2018 for selected countries in the MENA region includ-ing Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, Algeria, Morocco,Oman, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Theresult posits that natural resource utilization generally ham-pers the environment across the quantiles. However, thisnegative effect decreases until the 50th quantile beforestarting to rise again toward the upper quantiles. Addition-ally, primary energy utilization and globalization respectivelyworsen and improve environmental quantile, especiallytoward the upper quantiles while income affirms the inverted U-shaped hypothesis across the entire quantiles.Moreover, there is a statistically significant one-way direc-tional causality from natural resources, economic expansion,primary energy use, and globalization to carbon emissionlevels. Hence, the study offers environmentally friendlyresource utilization policies to the MENA economies andother resource-rich states by extension.publishedVersio

The role of alternative energy and globalization in decarbonization prospects of the oil-producing African economies

This study assesses the environmental impacts of the energy mix of mainly oil-producing African nations. The economic aspects of decarbonization prospects were also viewed from the perspectives of fossil energy dependence among the countries. More insights on the impacts of energy mix on decarbonization prospects were also provided on a country-specifc analysis basis via the application of second-generation econometric techniques in assessing carbon emission levels across the countries between 1990 and 2015. From the results, only renewable resources proved to be a signifcant decarbonization tool among the understudied oil-rich economies. Moreover, the consequences of the trio of fossil fuel consumption, income growth, and globalization are diametrically opposed to achieving decarbonization as the rise in their usage signifcantly acts as pollutant-inducing tools. The validity of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) conjecture was also upheld for the combined analysis of the panel countries. The study thus opined that the reduction in conventional energy dependence will enhance environmental quality. Consequently, given the advantages of the geographical locations of these countries in Africa, concerted strategies for more investment in clean renewable energy sources like solar and wind were suggested to policymakers among other recommendations.publishedVersio

Analysing governance‐led infrastructural development nexus in sub‐Saharan Africa : Does the moderating role of institutional quality matter?

Governments engage in infrastructural developments across the globe, and the level of success often colligates with institutional quality levels. However, despite the presence of governance, the lack of well-developed infrastructure has bedevilled sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries for decades. Therefore, this study investigates the governance-led infrastructural development hypothesis for the SSA region from an institutional quality perspective towards addressing the infrastructural deficit challenges of the region. A combination of advanced panel econometric techniques was applied to data collected from the African Development Bank, World Bank World Development Indicator, and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to investigate the governance-led infrastructural development hypothesis in SSA while controlling for financial development, economic growth, and industrialization in the region. The findings show that the interaction of institutional quality measures and governance indicators significantly and positively induces infrastructure in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Additionally, while economic growth and financial development yield no expected significant influence on infrastructural developments, industrialization plays a crucial role, as its spillover effects are not confined to boosting economic growth alone but also to infrastructural transformations. Thus, the provision of policy frameworks by authorities to strengthen institutions and promote good governance is vital for articulating and facilitating infrastructural development plans for SSA.© 2024 The Authors. Growth and Change published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Terrorism and Tourism: An Empirical Exemplification of Consequences of Terrorist Attacks on Tourism Revenues in Turkey

The booming tourism sector in Turkey has resulted in major economic gains in terms of direct revenues to both government and private sectors alike. Turkey had more than 45 million visits in 2018, and top inbound arrivals were from Russia and European Union (EU) members, such as Germany, the United Kingdom, and Bulgaria, among others (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2020). However, terrorism is becoming a challenge to tourism development. This study explores terrorism–tourism dynamics in Turkey. The short- and long-run impacts of terror attacks on tourism revenues were examined within the framework of an autoregressive lag (ARDL) model using monthly data for the period between 2012 and 2018. The empiri cal findings did not support terrorism\u27s effects on tourism revenues. However, in the long run, terror-related casualties and fatalities on tourism revenues had different effects. The findings affirm that the casualty rate has a stronger impact on terrorism–tourism dynamics in Turkey because a 1% increase in reported injuries from terror attacks hampers revenues by approximately 0.1%. Hence, adequate and continuous support for general security establishments is imperative while strengthening commitments to the international cooperation on the war against terrorism to proactively contain the undesirable impacts of terrorism in the Turkish tourism industry

Examining the dynamics of ecological footprint in China with spectral Granger causality and quantile-on-quantile approaches

With 2.5 global hectares (gha) per capita against 2.7 gha per capita, China’s ecological footprint is desirably below the world’s average ecological footprint per capita. Undesirably, the country’s per person ecological footprint outweighs the world’s average biocapacity per person of 1.7 gha, thus signifying an enormous pressure on the country’s ecological capacity. This reason accounts for the motivation to explore the dynamics of ecological footprint for China over the period 1971–2016 by employing a series of empirical techniques that include quantile-on-quantile regression (QQR), spectral Granger causality (SGC), and quantile regression. Indicatively, the empirical findings are in folds. First, from the QQR, economic growth exerts a positive effect on (i) ecological footprint especially in the middle quantile (0.4–0.7) and (ii) all quantiles (0.01–0.95) of economic growth. Second, both fossil fuel and primary energy utilization exert a positive impact on (i) all quantiles (0.01–0.95) of ecological footprint and (ii) all quantiles (0.01–0.95) of the two energy profiles. Third, it is surprising to see renewable energy utilization exerting a positive effect on ecological footprint at the lower tail (0.1–0.40) and on renewable energy use at the higher tail (0.70–0.95). Additionally, the SGC result revealed Granger causality from primary energy use and economic growth to the ecological footprint in the long-run without reverse. Additionally, without reverse, there is a Granger causality from renewable energy use to the ecological footprint in the short-, medium-, and long-term. Importantly, the overall policy implication suggests a more drastic decoupling of the country’s growth from the supply side (ecological pressure and environmental deprivation).© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

The effects of gas flaring as moderated by government quality in leading natural gas flaring economies

This study seeks to address pertinent economic and environmental issues associated with natural gas flaring, especially for the world's leading natural gas flaring economies (i.e. Russia, Iraq, Iran, the United States, Algeria, Venezuela, and Nigeria). By applying relevant empirical panel and country-specific approaches, the study found that fuel energy export positively impacts economic growth with elasticity of ~ 0.22 to ~ 0.24 for the panel examination. It is further revealed that environmental quality in the panel is hampered by increase in economic growth, gas flaring, fuel energy export, and urbanization. Moreover, for the country-wise inference, government quality desirably moderates economic and environmental aspects of gas flaring in Venezuela and Nigeria, and in Russia and Iran respectively. However, government quality moderates gas flaring to cause economic downturn in the USA. Additionally, economic growth increased with increase in urbanisation (in Iraq and the USA), gas flaring (in Iran and the USA), government quality (only in the USA), and fuel energy export (only in Algeria) while economic growth downturn is due to increase urbanisation in Russia and the USA, increase in fuel energy export in the USA, and increase in government quality in Russia. Meanwhile, environmental quality is worsened through intense carbon dioxide emission from increased urbanisation activity (in Iraq, Iran, Algeria, and Nigeria), increased fuel energy export (in Nigeria), increased natural gas flaring (in Algeria and Nigeria), increased GDP (in Russia, Iran, USA, Algeria, and Venezuela), and high government quality (in Iran). Interestingly, the result revealed that increase in GDP (in Nigeria), increase in urbanisation (in the USA), and increase in gas flaring (in Algeria and Nigeria) dampens environmental quality. Importantly, this study offers policy insight into sustainable approaches in natural gas production, government effectiveness, and regulatory quality.© The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. Te images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Assessing the roles of green innovations and renewables in environmental sustainability of resource-rich Sub-Saharan African states : A financial development perspective

Environmental literature keeps expanding on the natural resources-environmental sustainability conundrum. However, most studies examine this conundrum in different geographical locations other than resource-rich Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries while also neglecting the criticality of issues like green innovations, financial development, and renewable energy. Besides, the likelihood of a nonlinear relationship has often been jettisoned in the framework. Thus, the resources-sustainability nexus was examined in the SSA using robust econometric techniques, while underscoring the roles of green innovations, renewable energy, and financial development. Using the cross-sectional augmented auto-regressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL), cross-sectional augmented distributed lag (CS-DL), and the common correlated effect mean group (CCEMG) approaches that conciliate with residual cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity amongst others, we discovered that (i) the natural resources-sustainability nexus is nonlinear in SSA. (ii) unlike the environmental gains from green innovations and renewables in the SSA, natural resource harms their environmental sustainability (iii) the interaction between financial development and natural resources worsened the ecosystem of the countries (iv) the interaction between natural resources and the duo of green innovations and renewable energy enhances SSA's ecological quality (v) urbanization damage environmental sustainability by spurring ecological footprints. Furthermore, one-way causality paths were observed from the trio of natural resources, financial development, and green innovations to ecological footprints. But renewable energy and urbanization had a feedback causal relationship with ecological footprints. The findings are robust to CO2 emissions as an alternative environmental quality measure. Policy implications to foster SDGs-related pollution mitigation agenda were thereafter extensively discussed for the SSA.© 2024 The Authors. Natural Resources Forum published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of United Nations. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Assessing the drivers of (non)conventional energy portfolios in the South Asian economies : The role of technological innovation and human development

Energy is a vital component of economic development process, but part of the energy system including production and consumption of non-renewable energy sources largely constitute environment setback. Interestingly, this research contributes to the growing debate on understanding the factors contributing to energy consumption portfolios using the case of five major South Asian economies including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan from 1990 to 2018. Crucial factors like trade flow, human development index, technological innovations, and urbanization were controlled for while examining the roles of economic expansion on the disaggregated energy consumption portfolios (renewable and non-renewable energy sources) of these countries. The empirical dissection revealed that economic growth and the duo of trade and innovation are inimical to environmental sustainability as they trigger nonrenewable energy consumption while suppressing cleaner energy usage in the South Asian bloc. Urbanization on the other hand shows significant simultaneous positive impacts on the consumption of both renewables and nonrenewable energy, but its impacts are more pronounced on the latter than the former. Lastly, the study posits that human development and urbanization are major drivers of clean energy among the countries. Thus, strategic investment plans for human development enhancements and greener urban infrastructures are recommended for environmental sustainability goals in the region.© 2023 The Authors. Sustainable Development published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed