Abstract
The survey explores the relationship between growth determinants on carbon emissions of 44 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa for the duration 1990–2014. The research applies Dumitrescu and Hurlin’s Granger causality and pooled mean group models to analyse data. A two-way (bidirectional) involving environmental quality (emissions) and the following variables—economic growth, renewable energy consumption, industrial practice and financial development, is established. A one-way (unidirectional) causality out of actual development of agriculture to carbon emissions as well as human capital to emissions is apparent. Moreover, economic growth illustrates a positive and significant link with emissions, and the opposite is true for renewable energy consumption in both periods (short-run together with long-run). Financial development shows a negative and insignificant link with environmental quality in the short-term although in the long-term that connection is significantly positive. Industrial practice is significantly positively associated with emissions in the short-term and significantly negatively connected with emissions in the long-term. The actual development of agriculture illustrates an insignificantly positive connection with emissions in the short-term but such a link is positively significant in the long-term. Human capital indicates an insignificantly positive association with environmental quality in the short-run although the result changes to being significantly negative in the long-term. The study generally demonstrates that these country growth determinants in SSA still add increasing levels of carbon emissions in practice.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adedoyin, F. F., Gumede, M. I., Bekun, F. V., Etokakpan, M. U., & Balsalobre-Lorente, D. (2020). Modelling coal rent, economic growth and CO2 emissions: Does regulatory quality matter in BRICS economies? Science of the Total Environment, 710, 136284.
Ahmed, Z., Zafar, M. W., & Ali, S. (2020). Linking urbanization, human capital, and the ecological footprint in G7 countries: An empirical analysis. Sustainable Cities and Society, 55, 102064.
Alam, M. M., Murad, M. W., Noman, A. H. M., & Ozturk, I. (2016). Relationships among carbon emissions, economic growth, energy consumption and population growth: Testing Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis for Brazil, China, India and Indonesia. Ecological Indicators, 70, 466–479.
Asafu-Adjaye, J., Byrne, D., & Alvarez, M. (2016). Economic growth, fossil fuel and non-fossil consumption: A pooled mean group analysis using proxies for capital. Energy economics, 60, 345–356.
Bano, S., Zhao, Y., Ahmad, A., Wang, S., & Liu, Y. (2018). Identifying the impacts of human capital on carbon emissions in Pakistan. Journal of Cleaner Production, 183, 1082–1092.
Bashir, A., Thamrin, K. H., Farhan, M., Mukhlis, M., & Dirta, P. A. (2019). The causality between human capital, energy consumption, CO2 emissions, and economic growth: Empirical evidence from Indonesia. International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, 9(2), 98–104.
Begum, R. A., Sohag, K., Abdullah, S. M. S., & Jaafar, M. (2015). CO2 emissions, energy consumption, economic and population growth in Malaysia. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 41, 594–601.
Bekun, F. V., Alola, A. A., & Sarkodie, S. A. (2019). Toward a sustainable environment: Nexus between CO2 emissions, resource rent, renewable and non-renewable energy in 16-EU countries. Science of the Total Environment, 657, 1023–1029.
Bhattacharya, M., Churchill, S. A., & Paramati, S. R. (2017). The dynamic impact of renewable energy and institutions on economic output and CO2 emissions across regions. Renewable Energy, 111, 157–167.
Bilan, Y., Streimikiene, D., Vasylieva, T., Lyulyov, O., Pimonenko, T., & Pavlyk, A. (2019). Linking between renewable energy, CO2 emissions, and economic growth: Challenges for candidates and potential candidates for the EU membership. Sustainability, 11(6), 1528.
Bilgili, F., Koçak, E., & Bulut, Ü. (2016). The dynamic impact of renewable energy consumption on CO2 emissions: A revisited Environmental Kuznets Curve approach. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 54, 838–845.
Dar, J. A., & Asif, M. (2018). Does financial development improve environmental quality in Turkey? An application of endogenous structural breaks based cointegration approach. Management of Environmental Quality: An International Journal, 29(2), 368–384.
Dar, J. A., & Asif, M. (2019). Do agriculture-based economies mitigate CO2 emissions? International Journal of Energy Sector Management, 14(3), 638–652.
Dogan, E., & Seker, F. (2016). The influence of real output, renewable and non-renewable energy, trade and financial development on carbon emissions in the top renewable energy countries. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 60, 1074–1085.
Dogan, E., & Turkekul, B. (2016). CO2 emissions, real output, energy consumption, trade, urbanization and financial development: Testing the EKC hypothesis for the USA. Environmental Science and Pollution Research, 23(2), 1203–1213.
Doğan, N. (2018). The impact of agriculture on CO2 emissions in China. Panoeconomicus, 66(2), 257–271.
Dumitrescu, E. I., & Hurlin, C. (2012). Testing for Granger non-causality in heterogeneous panels. Economic modelling, 29(4), 1450–1460.
Ganda, F. (2019a). The impact of industrial practice on carbon emissions in the BRICS: A panel quantile regression analysis. Progress in Industrial Ecology, An International Journal, 13(1), 84–107.
Ganda, F. (2019b). The impact of innovation and technology investments on carbon emissions in selected organisation for economic Co-operation and development countries. Journal of Cleaner Production, 217, 469–483.
González, D., & Martínez, M. (2012). Decomposition analysis of CO2 emissions in the Mexican industrial sector. Energy for Sustainable Development, 16(2), 204–215.
Hanif, I., Raza, S. M. F., Gago-de-Santos, P., & Abbas, Q. (2019). Fossil fuels, foreign direct investment, and economic growth have triggered CO2 emissions in emerging Asian economies: Some empirical evidence. Energy, 171, 493–501.
Jamel, L., & Derbali, A. (2016). Do energy consumption and economic growth lead to environmental degradation? Evidence from Asian economies. Cogent Economics & Finance, 4(1), 1170653.
Jebli, M. B., & Youssef, S. B. (2017). The role of renewable energy and agriculture in reducing CO2 emissions: Evidence for North Africa countries. Ecological indicators, 74, 295–301.
Jebli, M. B., & Youssef, S. B. (2019). Combustible renewables and waste consumption, agriculture, CO2 emissions and economic growth in Brazil. Carbon Management, 10(3), 309–321.
Kao, C. (1999). Spurious regression and residual-based tests for cointegration in panel data. Journal of Econometrics, 90(1), 1–44.
Khoshnevis Yazdi, S., & Shakouri, B. (2018). The renewable energy, CO2 emissions, and economic growth: VAR model. Energy Sources, Part B: Economics, Planning, and Policy, 13(1), 53–59.
Lin, B., Omoju, O. E., & Okonkwo, J. U. (2015). Impact of industrialisation on CO2 emissions in Nigeria. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 52, 1228–1239.
Liu, X., Zhang, S., & Bae, J. (2017). The impact of renewable energy and agriculture on carbon dioxide emissions: Investigating the environmental Kuznets curve in four selected ASEAN countries. Journal of Cleaner Production, 164, 1239–1247.
Lopez, L., & Weber, S. (2017). Testing for Granger causality in panel data. The Stata Journal, 17(4), 972–984.
Mousavi, B., Lopez, N. S. A., Biona, J. B. M., Chiu, A. S., & Blesl, M. (2017). Driving forces of Iran’s CO2 emissions from energy consumption: An LMDI decomposition approach. Applied Energy, 206, 804–814.
Muhammad, B. (2019). Energy consumption, CO2 emissions and economic growth in developed, emerging and Middle East and North Africa countries. Energy, 179, 232–245.
Omri, A., Daly, S., Rault, C., & Chaibi, A. (2015). Financial development, environmental quality, trade and economic growth: What causes what in MENA countries. Energy Economics, 48, 242–252.
Özokcu, S., & Özdemir, Ö. (2017). Economic growth, energy, and environmental Kuznets curve. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 72, 639–647.
Pedroni, P. (1999). Critical values for cointegration tests in heterogeneous panels with multiple regressors. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 61(S1), 653–670.
Pedroni, P. (2004). Panel cointegration: asymptotic and finite sample properties of pooled time series tests with an application to the PPP hypothesis. Econometric Theory, 20(3), 597–625.
Pesaran, M. H., & Smith, R. (1995). Estimating long-run relationships from dynamic heterogeneous panels. Journal of Econometrics, 68(1), 79–113.
Pesaran, M. H., Shin, Y., & Smith, R. P. (1999). Pooled mean group estimation of dynamic heterogeneous panels. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 94(446), 621–634.
Pesaran, M. H. (2007). A simple panel unit root test in the presence of cross-section dependence. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 22(2), 265–312.
Pesaran, M. H., & Yamagata, T. (2008). Testing slope homogeneity in large panels. Journal of Econometrics, 142(1), 50–93.
Qureshi, M. I., Awan, U., Arshad, Z., Rasli, A. M., Zaman, K., & Khan, F. (2016). Dynamic linkages among energy consumption, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and agricultural production in Pakistan: sustainable agriculture key to policy success. Natural Hazards, 84(1), 367–381.
Rahman, M. M. (2017). Do population density, economic growth, energy use and exports adversely affect environmental quality in Asian populous countries? Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 77, 506–514.
Saidi, K., & Mbarek, M. B. (2016). Nuclear energy, renewable energy, CO2 emissions, and economic growth for nine developed countries: Evidence from panel Granger causality tests. Progress in Nuclear Energy, 88, 364–374.
Salahuddin, M., Gow, J., & Ozturk, I. (2015). Is the long-run relationship between economic growth, electricity consumption, carbon dioxide emissions and financial development in Gulf Cooperation Council Countries robust? Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 51, 317–326.
Sapkota, P., & Bastola, U. (2017). Foreign direct investment, income, and environmental pollution in developing countries: Panel data analysis of Latin America. Energy Economics, 64, 206–212.
Sarkodie, S. A., Adams, S., Owusu, P. A., Leirvik, T., & Ozturk, I. (2020). Mitigating degradation and emissions in China: The role of environmental sustainability, human capital and renewable energy. Science of the Total Environment, 719, 137530.
Sekrafi, H., & Sghaier, A. (2018). Examining the relationship between corruption, economic growth, environmental degradation, and energy consumption: a panel analysis in MENA region. Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 9(3), 963–979.
Shahbaz, M., Nasir, M. A., & Roubaud, D. (2018). Environmental degradation in France: the effects of FDI, financial development, and energy innovations. Energy Economics, 74, 843–857.
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2013). World Economic and Social Survey 2013- Sustainable Development Challenges. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/2843WESS2013.pdf (Retrieved 10 July 2020).
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2008). Achieving Sustainable Development and Promoting Development Cooperation– Dialogues at the ECOSOC. https://www.un.org/en/ecosoc/docs/pdfs/fina_08-45773.pdf (Retrieved 10 July 2020).
Yu, X., Chen, H., Wang, B., Wang, R., & Shan, Y. (2018). Driving forces of CO2 emissions and mitigation strategies of China’s National low carbon pilot industrial parks. Applied Energy, 212, 1553–1562.
Zafar, M. W., Zaidi, S. A. H., Sinha, A., Gedikli, A., & Hou, F. (2019). The role of stock market and banking sector development, and renewable energy consumption in carbon emissions: Insights from G-7 and N-11 countries. Resources Policy, 62, 427–436.
Zoundi, Z. (2017). CO2 emissions, renewable energy and the Environmental Kuznets Curve, a panel cointegration approach. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 72, 1067–1075.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Appendix: list of studied countries
Appendix: list of studied countries
Angola; Benin; Botswana; Burkina Faso; Burundi; Cameroon; Cape Verde; Central African Republic; Chad; Comoros; Republic of the Congo; Democratic Republic of the Congo; Cote d'Ivoire; Djibouti; Equatorial Guinea; Eritrea; Ethiopia; Gabon; The Gambia; Ghana; Guinea; Guinea-Bissau; Kenya; Madagascar; Malawi; Mali; Mauritania; Mauritius; Mozambique; Namibia; Niger; Nigeria; Rwanda; Senegal; Seychelles; Sierra Leone; South Africa; Sudan; Swaziland; Tanzania; Togo; Uganda; Zambia; Zimbabwe.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ganda, F. The influence of growth determinants on environmental quality in Sub-Saharan Africa states. Environ Dev Sustain 23, 7117–7139 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-020-00907-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-020-00907-7