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In developing economies, the role of the financial sector and foreign capital in the stimulation of sustainable production practices has not been very clear cut. In a bid to obtain a much clearer empirical perspective, the present study investigates the causal relationship between financial development, financial inclusion, foreign direct investment (FDI) and sustainable development in a panel of 33 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) economies within the 2004-2018 study periods. Panel cointegration tests uncover the presence of a long-run relationship among the variables in the model.Prior to determining the direction of causality, panel estimation procedures show the magnitude and signs of the long run coefficients. Panel Granger causality tests uncover bidirectional causality between financial inclusion and FDI as well as between financial development and FDI. Also uncovered is unidirectional causality from FDI towards sustainable development and resource rents. This study suggests that the policymakers in SSA should optimize the level of financial development which requires a vigorous improvement so as to ensure higher potential benefits for the sustainability of SSA region through financial sector.

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Trade has become a carrier for transporting both clean and dirty (pollution-intensive) goods, services and technologies between countries. While the impact of trade on economic development has been reported in the extant literature, insufficient and inconsistent results exist between pollution-embedded trade and environmental performance. Using the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Generalized method of moments and panel quantiles via Moments, this study explored the role of government integrity on trade-environment nexus in the post-Kyoto protocol era for 79 countries between 2008 and 2018. The empirical results suggest that per capita GDP and government integrity improve environmental performance whereas trade impedes it. In the quantile regression model, the effect of government integrity is significant at the median quantiles with a stronger effect in countries with higher environmental performance. The negative effect of trade is not only significant from the lower quantile through the median quantile but decreases in magnitude, tracking from countries with lower to higher environmental performance. While the positive effect of government integrity is significant from the median quantile onwards, the negative effect of trade is only significant in the lower quantile. Robustness analysis from the GMM dynamic panel estimation technique shows that interacting government integrity with trade yields a positive and significant coefficient. Meaning that improved government integrity averts the negative effect of trade on environmental performance. The study suggests that outsourcing the regulations of trade-oriented multinational companies operating in developing economies with weak institutions to global humanitarian organisations such as the United Nations would be the first step to reduce trade-attributable environmental degradation.

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