The human well-being and environmental degradation nexus in Africa

Abstract

Environmental degradation continues to attract interest from academics, policymakers, and other stakeholders. However, empirical studies have been limited, particularly in the choice of human well-being indicators.Therefore, this study extends the literature by broadening the nexus between human well-being and environmental degradation in 29 African countries from 1970 to 2019. Preliminary tests adaptable to effects of cross-sectional dependency and heterogeneity in panel dataset were adopted, alongside the cross-sectional auto-regressive distributed lag model and the Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality approach. Findings from the study showed that the adopted human well-being indicators such as globalisation, life expectancy and human capital development were environmentally enhancing both in the short and long term. In contrast, growth in income was found to be environmentally degrading in the short and long term. At the same time, urbanisation was only environmentally detrimental in the long term with no significant short-term effect. Natural resource rent which served as a control variable, was environmentally degrading both in the short and long term. Also, a bidirectional association between human well-being and environmental degradation was confirmed. Consequently, this study implies a win-win symbiotic nexus between the environment and human well-being in African countries.

Does Rising Resources Income, Consumer Prices, Government Outlay, and Globalisation Hinder Africa's Sustainable Development?

“…Similarly, Aladejare (2022b) demonstrated with the fixed and random effect, feasible generalised least squares (FGLS) and AMG methodologies; and found that natural resource rents worsened ecological sustainability for the five wealthiest African countries. In a related study, Aladejare (2023c) applied the CS-ARDL approach and revealed that natural resource wealth promotes ecological atrophy in 29 African economies. Alola et al (2019) demonstrated with the ARDL technique that high inflation episodes in coastline Mediterranean countries enhance ecological sustainability.…”

“…From the neoliberal perspective, globalisation has been a blessing than a curse, especially from the lens of depreciating poverty and income inequality in developing nations (Aladejare and Nyiputen, 2022;Adjei and Adu-Gyamfi, 2022). However, globalisation is also believed to have aided developing countries' accelerated ecological deterioration through the transfer of "dirty technology" from the developed world (Le and Ozturk, 2020;Nathaniel et al, 2021;Aladejare, 2023c).…”

Assessing Quality of Life from the Lens of Sustainability in Africa

“…However, the saving-investment gap in developing countries is a clog in providing the amenities required for a better life. Consequently, countries often rely on foreign debt to augment their capital shortfall in the condition of the needed infrastructures for an enhanced QoL (Aladejare, 2022;Khan et al, 2022;Aladejare, 2023b). Also, most developing economies are characterised by a limited fiscal space deficient in meeting their development needs (OECD, 2020); hence, debt financing continues to rise.…”

“…Studies examining the contemporaneous impact of these indicators on QoL are scarce, particularly for developing and emerging economies. Specifically, most Africanrelated literature has dwelled on income, healthcare, and ecological determinants (Sarkodie and Adams, 2020;Cavusoglu and Gimba, 2021;Omokanmi et al, 2022;Mahalik et al, 2022;Aladejare, 2023b). However, the roles of renewable energy, urbanisation, and external debt alongside those above are seldom considered in QoL improvement in the continent.…”

Does Rising Resources Income, Consumer Prices, Government Outlay, and Globalisation Hinder Africa's Sustainable Development?

“…From the neoliberal perspective, globalisation has been a blessing than a curse, especially from the lens of depreciating poverty and income inequality in developing nations (Aladejare and Nyiputen, 2022;Adjei and Adu-Gyamfi, 2022). However, globalisation is also believed to have aided developing countries' accelerated ecological deterioration through the transfer of "dirty technology" from the developed world (Le and Ozturk, 2020;Nathaniel, 2021;Hussain and Zhou, 2022;Aladejare, 2023c).…”