Environmental sustainability in developing countries: Understanding the criticality of financial inclusion and globalization

Although the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become the largest global platform for economic, social, and energy cooperation, there remains a question of how to effectively utilize its globalizing role to promote sustainable development among the countries along the route. Innovation capability is identified as the key to resolving sustainable development issue, because innovation capability has the potential to effectively reconcile the conflict between economic development and environmental conservation. Therefore, this study has opted to utilize a sample of 99 countries across the globe, comprising of 78 BRI countries and 21 non‐BRI countries. The DDD model has been employed to examine the impact of innovation capability on sustainable development in the BRI. The result shows that BRI can contribute to the achievement of green sustainable development. Innovation serves as an effective means to improve green sustainable development, which can be achieved through green technical progress and green technical efficiency. In addition, global cooperation has a significant moderating effect on this outcome, with the foreign direct investment and trade capability being the main moderators of economic global cooperation, while digital capability, infrastructure, and social exchange are the main moderators of social global cooperation. Finally, in the regional heterogeneity analysis, we find that the results of the role of the four continents are more consistent with the regression results of the total world sample, the difference being that the moderating role of global cooperation is not consistent across states.

Section: Empirical Results and Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Global cooperation is a crucial factor in achieving fair solutions for green production on a global scale (Zhao et al, 2022). We examine…”

Section: Further Mechanism Testmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovation capability, global cooperation, and sustainable development along the Belt and Road Initiative

Wang,

Gong,

Yang

2023

“…From the onset of the ratification of the sustainable development goals (SDG) agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the global economies have committed to strategize innovative plans for achieving sustainable development, especially by boosting economic excellence and simultaneously lowering the associated hardships that are exerted on the environment (Murshed et al, 2022; Zhao et al, 2022). Accordingly, it has become pertinent for the world economies to integrate the environmental protection objectives within their respective economic growth policies; consequently, environment‐friendly economic growth can be accomplished.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can energy productivity gains harness the carbon dioxide‐inhibiting agenda of the Next 11 countries? Implications for achieving sustainable development

Murshed

Khan

et al. 2022

The Next 11 countries are among the world's most rapidy emerging economies that are poised to becoming key drivers of the global economy. Nonetheless, despite progressing economically, these nations have experienced persistent deterioration in their environmental conditions. Hence, this study specifically investigates whether energy productivity gains, controlling for financial inclusion, renewable energy use, economic growth, international trade, and urbanization, can harness the carbon dioxide emissions (CO2E)-inhibiting objectives of the Next 11 countries. The empirical analysis, using annual data spanning from 2004 to 2020, involves the application of advanced econometric tools that are robust to handling the cross-sectional dependency and slope heterogeneity-related issues.The results from the econometric analysis indicate that although energy productivity gains and greater renewable energy consumption reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, making the financial system more inclusive tends to amplify the emission levels. More importantly, energy productivity gains and financial inclusion are observed to jointly reduce the CO2E figures of the Next 11 countries. Thus, it can be said that making more productive use of energy can, to some extent, neutralize the adverse environmenntal impacts of financial inclusion. Additionally, higher economic growth, greater international trade participation, and urbanization are evidenced to boost CO2E in these countries while higher renewable energy use is observed to curb the emission levels. Furthermore, heterogeneous countryspecific outcomes are also witnessed. In particular, energy productivity improvement is seen to curb CO2E in eight of these nations while a simultaneous rise in the levels of energy productivity and financial inclusion is found to jointly mitigate and boost CO2E in 55% and 18% of the Next 11 nations, respectively. Hence, in line with these key findings, a set of critically important environmental development-related policies are suggested.

“…More recently, the sustainable development process has as one of its focuses the sustainability of the financial system (Aras et al, 2018; Zhao et al, 2022). Therefore, studying the sustainability reports of major financial institutions allows us to understand the degree of transparency and commitment of these institutions to the sustainable development process of an economy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sustainable development, disclosure to stakeholders and the Sustainable Development Goals: Evidence from Brazilian banks' non‐financial reports

Chagas

Albuquerque

Maia-Filho

et al. 2022

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are ambitious global targets proposed by 2030 Agenda. The private sector should contribute to these goals, and the non‐financial disclosure reports is the primary means to inform stakeholders about the impacts of corporate activities on the environment and society, as well as their contributions to sustainable development. Therefore, measuring the quality of these reports is an essential task in order to propose improvements and identify the level of transparency. This article analyses 11 non‐financial reports of the largest banks operating in Brazil, using a methodological approach divided into two stages: the sustainability disclosure matrix and the measurement system. The first stage is based on the analysis of the material topics provided for in the reports under the Global Reporting Initiative standard and their relationship with the SDGs. The second stage quantitatively measures the different degrees of quality of the information disclosed for each disclosure topic, generating the disclosure quality performance indicator. This indicator allows indicating how pro sustainability a corporation is. The work contributes by proposing a quality classification of the non‐financial report, besides revealing the direct relationship existing between the number of material topics reported and the quality indicator. The main result of the empirical analysis is that Brazilian banks' reports are of low quality. Some practical implications: it was found that the more information disclosed, the better the quality of reporting; and the use of integrated reporting as a tool for disclosure of non‐financial results is suggested.