The talk with present the key results of the IPCC Working Group III 5th assessment report. Concluding four years of intense scientific collaboration by hundreds of authors from around the world, the report responds to the request of the world's governments for a comprehensive, objective and policy neutral assessment of the current scientific knowledge on mitigating climate change. The report has been extensively reviewed by experts and governments to ensure quality and comprehensiveness.

Climate change 2014 - Mitigation of climate change

This paper attempts to estimate the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) in the case of France by taking the role of nuclear energy in electricity production into account. We adopt the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration as the estimation method. Additionally, we examine the stability of the estimated models and investigate the Granger causality relationships between the variables in the system. The results from our estimation provide evidence supporting the EKC hypothesis and the estimated models are shown to be stable over the sample period. The uni-direction running from other variables to CO2 emissions are confirmed from the casualty tests. Specifically, the uni-directional causality relationship running from nuclear energy to CO2 emissions statistically provides evidence on the important role of nuclear energy in reducing CO2 emissions.

Empirical Study on the Environmental Kuznets Curve for CO2 in France: The Role of Nuclear Energy

Modelling the dynamic linkages between eco-innovation, urbanization, economic growth and ecological footprints for G7 countries: Does financial globalization matter?

The linkages between natural resources, human capital, globalization, economic growth, financial development, and ecological footprint: The moderating role of technological innovations

Fossil fuel-dependency has induced a trade-off between economic growth and environmental degradation across the developing nations in particular. Against this backdrop, this study aims to evaluate the impacts of renewable energy use on the ecological footprints in the context of four South Asian fossil fuel-dependent nations: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The econometric analysis involves the use of recently developed methods that account for cross-sectional dependency, slope heterogeneity, and structural break issues in the data. The results reveal that renewable energy consumption reduces the ecological footprints while nonrenewable energy use boosts the ecological footprints. The results also confirm the validity of the environmental Kuznets curve and pollution haven hypotheses for the panel of the South Asian nations. Besides, foreign direct investment inflows are found to degrade the environment while higher institutional quality improves it. Furthermore, unidirectional causalities are run from overall energy use, economic growth, and institutional quality to ecological footprints. At the same time, bidirectional associations between foreign direct investment inflows and ecological footprints are also ascertained. The overall findings highlight the pertinence of reducing fossil fuel-dependency, enhancing economic growth, restricting dirty foreign direct investment inflows, and improving institutional quality to ensure environmental sustainability across South Asia.

Renewable Energy Use and Ecological Footprints Mitigation: Evidence from Selected South Asian Economies

This study stabs to probe the impact of financial development, urbanization, trade openness, political institutions, and energy consumption on the ecological footprints (EF), within the framework of EKC, of 110 countries congregated by income levels, over the time span of 1996–2016. The final outcome of cross-sectionally weighted Panel EGLS and multi-step A-B GMM evidently reinforced the existence of EKC hypothesis in case of EF both in developed and less-developed countries. This study finds the destructive environmental impact of composition effect and energy consumption while political institutions, trade openness, and urbanization have constructive environmental effect. Financial development reduces the human demand on nature only in less-developed countries. The ultimate consequences of this study are equipped with several policy recommendations for the concerned authorities.

Catechizing the Environmental-Impression of Urbanization, Financial Development, and Political Institutions: A Circumstance of Ecological Footprints in 110 Developed and Less-Developed Countries

This study endeavors to explore the bearing of financial development, political institutions, urbanization, and trade openness on CO2 emanations in a group of 59 less-developed countries, over the period of 1996–2016. In order to estimate environmental impacts of aforementioned series, we used cross-sectionally weighted Estimated Generalized Least Square (EGLS) methodology, Arellano-Bond Generalized Method of Moment (A-B GMM), and Orthogonal-Deviation GMM (O-D GMM). The study finds that financial development, urbanization, composition effect (measured by capital/labor ratio) and energy consumption deteriorate environmental quality. Our results confirmed the prevalence of Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) proposition which undertakes upturned-U shape bond amid economic growth and pollution emanations. Furthermore, institutions and foreign trade are found to have beneficial environmental impact. This study suggests resilient institutional reforms and comprehensively integrated environmental quality concerns in financial reforms to help to mitigate pollution emanations and achieve sustained economic growth in less-developed economies.

The impact of financial development, political institutions, and urbanization on environmental degradation: evidence from 59 less-developed economies

The study probes the relationship between health expenditures, forestation, and environmental quality using panel data of 87 countries, through 1999–2018. The empirical analysis is based on 16 high-income, 22 upper-middle-income, 18 low-middle-income, 13 low-income, and 18 partner countries of one belt one road (OBOR) project. The Chinese government initiated one belt one road (OBOR) project to enhance the level of cooperation among partner countries in different sectors of an economy. The study incorporates a difference and system generalized method of moments (GMM) to control the problem of endogeneity. Empirical findings reveal the positive and significant relationship between CO2 emission and per capita health expenditure among the selected samples of all countries. However, forest area exhibits negative and significant association with per capita health expenditure in low-income and partner of one belt one road (OBOR) countries. The study incorporates different regression specification categories and amalgamation with different control variables such as per capita income, trade, and industrial value-added to ensure the robustness of estimates.

Iftikhar Yasin

Papers

Catechizing the Environmental-Impression of Urbanization, Financial Development, and Political Institutions: A Circumstance of Ecological Footprints in 110 Developed and Less-Developed Countries

The impact of financial development, political institutions, and urbanization on environmental degradation: evidence from 59 less-developed economies

Environmental quality, forestation, and health expenditure: a cross-country evidence