Examining sustainable development goals: are developing countries advancing in sustainable energy and environmental sustainability?

Environmental sustainability is vital in developing countries for sustainable economic development, poverty reduction, food security, climate change adaptation, biodiversity conservation, global equity, and access to sustainable energy. In contributing to literature, this study computed composite variables following the unavailability of a unified sustainable development goals (SDGs) database to examine the progress of ten sample developing countries. The authors propose the design of a database that utilizes the specific SDG indicators for empirical research. In testing the applicability of the proposed database, we sampled 32 indicators from the World Development Indicators database and employed principal component analysis to compute composite variables. The authors then contribute to broadening the understanding of literature by examining to what extent developing countries advance towards ensuring agricultural, energy, and environmental sustainability. And how the interplay between the SDG indicators differ across the low- and middle-income countries in terms of econometric analysis. The findings suggest that since the adoption of SDGs in 2015, developing countries have made progress in advancing water and sanitation sustainability, leading to improved environmental sustainability. Furthermore, the middle-income countries have demonstrated greater improvements in energy and agriculture sustainability compared to low-income countries in contributing to overall environmental sustainability. The developmental relationship between sustainable energy and agriculture in low- to middle-income countries reveals increased diversity, thereby presenting challenges in attaining synergy within SDGs in developing countries. Therefore, addressing and understanding the intricacies behind the adverse relationship between sustainable energy and agriculture is crucial in formulating curative policies that advance the progress of SDGs. The study concludes that environmental sustainability is a vital developmental concern to be integrated into inter-generational and intra-generational development in the SDG framework. Also, the progress of the SDG indicators is endogenous and the extent to which low-income countries lag behind middle-income towards achieving collective goals requires critical policy intervention.

Impact of natural gas consumption on sub-Saharan Africa's CO2 emissions: Evidence and policy perspective.

With huge natural gas(NG) reserves and current low (1%) share of non-hydro renewables in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), can natural gas offer SSA a low-carbon energy transition? Employing data from 1980 to 2017, this paper investigates the impact of NG consumption on SSA's CO2 emissions using data-driven nonparametric additive regression(NPAR) which can reveal both linear and nonlinear effects. Augmenting NPAR with translog production function(TPF) estimates of interfuel substitution elasticities and bias technological progress over sample period(advantage of TPF), we further provide evidence of the indirect effect of NG consumption on SSA's CO2 emissions through mechanism analysis. From the empirical results, the linear effect shows NG positively impact CO2 emissions while the nonlinear effect indicates a downward decreasing trend (meaning expansion in NG consumption will gradually lower CO2 emissions). Nonlinearly, urbanization and energy efficiency also show positive "inverted U-Shaped" and "downward slopping" respectively meaning sustainable urban energy and energy efficiency practices improvement can lead to CO2 reduction respectively in SSA. The reducing effect of NG consumption on CO2 (the nonlinear effect) is realized through the enhancement of positive bias technological progress of NG over coal and oil but not merely substitution of coal and oil for NG. Technological progress improvement in NG use will also reduce the positive linear effect of urbanization and energy efficiency on CO2 emissions of SSA. Oil is more likely to be substituted for NG than that of coal in SSA. The scenario analysis shows a total of 6.9%, 7.6% and 8.3% of energy conservation is realized in 2022, 2026 and 2030 with a corresponding CO2 reduction of 18.7%, 20.7% and 22.9% respectively for a continuous 10% investment in NG. Institutional, market-oriented and technology challenges hinder NG development among major producers in SSA. Based on the results, several policy measures are put forward to promote SSA's low-carbon energy transition.

Exploring the techno-economic feasibility of mine rock waste utilisation in road works: The case of a mining deposit in Ghana.

Mine rock waste, which is the rock material removed in order to access and mine ore, is free from gold processing chemical contaminants but presents a significant environmental challenge owing to the large volumes involved. One way of mitigating the environmental and safety challenges posed by the large volume of mine rock waste stockpiled in mining communities is to find uses of this material as a substitute for rock aggregates in construction. This article reports on a study conducted to evaluate the engineering properties of such a mine deposit to determine its suitability for use as road pavement material. Samples of mine rock waste, derived from the granitic and granodioritic intrusive units overlying the gold-bearing metavolcanic rock and volcano-clastic sediments of a gold mining area in Ghana, were obtained from three mine rock waste disposal facilities and subjected to a battery of laboratory tests to determine their physical, mechanical, geotechnical, geometrical and durability properties. The overall conclusion was that the mine rock waste met all the requirements of the Ghana Ministry of Transportation specification for use as aggregates for crushed rock subbase, base and surface dressing chippings for road pavements. The recommendation is to process it into the required sizes for the various applications.