Linking governance with environmental quality: a global perspective

Abstract

Sustainable environmental quality is a global concern, and a concrete remedy to overcome this challenge is a policy priority. Therefore, this study delves into the subject and examines the effects of governance on environmental quality in 180 countries from 1999 to 2021. To maintain comparability and precision, we first classify countries into full and income-level panels and then, innovatively, construct a composite governance index (CGI) to capture the extensive effects of governance on CO2 emissions. Complementing the stationarity properties of the variables, we employ the cross-sectionally augmented autoregressive distributed lags model to analyze the data. Our survey yields four key findings. First, a long-run nexus between CGI, CO2 emissions, and other control variables is confirmed. Second, the findings indicate that CGI is crucial to improving environmental quality by reducing CO2 emissions across all panels. Third, we find that while CGI maintains a similar magnitude, the size of its effects substantially varies according to the income level of the underlying countries. Fourth, the findings reveal that energy consumption, population growth rate, trade openness, and urbanization contribute to environmental degradation, while financial development and the human development index are significant in reducing CO2 emissions. Our findings suggest specific policy implications, summing up that one common policy is not a good fit for all environmental quality measures.

Renewable energy and ecological footprint nexus: Evidence from dynamic panel threshold technique

“…This suggests a robust presence of cross-sectional dependence among the variables. The existence of CD among units commonly stems from homogenous economic structures, trade activities, and typical emission patterns [ 106 , 107 ]. Additionally, in the presence of CD, traditional panel unit root tests may fail to accurately capture the true stationarity of the variables.…”

Characterisation and causal model of the holistic dynamics of the integral sustainability of the agri-food system

“…The integration model, in general, requires validation in order to identify the level of the contribution in the sector with criteria of a more solid nature. This constitutes a valuable contribution that would enable policy management to implement tools in favour of the creation of comprehensive strategies for the reduction of the negative impacts of certain economic and industrial activities, which represent a critical issue for today’s nations [ 103 , 104 ].…”