Impact Of Economic Growth On CO₂ Emissions:Evidence From African Economies

Sustainable green environment,green innovation,and a low-carbon economy are the top priorities of governments and global climate institutions.Indeed,the link amid economic growth and environmental sustainability has been commonly discussed in the literature,with different outcomes.This study endeavors to partly fill the research gap by using recent panel estimators to explore the long-run cointegration nexus between economic growth and CO₂ emissions（pollution）by incorporating trade openness,energy consumption,and urbanization as control variables.In terms of decision making,this research further grouped the specified 25 newly emerging African nations into oil-exporting and non-oil exporting economies.The data collected are annual and cover the period from 1990 to 2018.The panel cross-sectional dependency and homogeneity results indicated that the selected variables are heavily interdependent across the various cross-sections in the long-run.Similarly,the panel unit root test and bootstrap cointegration estimates showed evidence of stationarity and long-run equilibrium connection between the chosen variables for all panels.The long-run panel estimates using the common correlated effects mean group approach shows that economic growth positively impacts on CO₂ emissions but insignificant,energy usage and urbanization depicted a positive and substantial impact on long-run carbon emissions for all 25 countries,while energy usage depicted a positive significant impact on long-run emission for oil and non-oil panels.The Dumitrescu and Hurlin non-causality results indicated a bidirectional causal relationship between income and pollution,energy consumption and pollution,urbanization,and pollution for all three panels.Likewise,except for the oil-countries panel,there was evidence of a feedback causality between trade openness and pollution.The outcome further verified the EKC framework but with distinct threshold points for all three panels.Based on the result of this research and a policy perspective,the possible occurrence of cross-sectional dependence across economies,demand the global or regional collaboration of countries in the quest to promote a lower-carbon economy.Similarly,the increasing volumes of global value chain combined with increasing levels of economic integration have made economic growth highly pollution-intensive,particularly carbon emissions;therefore,investing in renewable energy technology will help to minimize the adverse environmental consequences of economic growth.