Linking energy-based circularity with environment in high-income economies.

A circular economy is a regenerative approach that emphasizes resource efficiency, waste reduction, and the reuse of materials for a sustainable world. By adopting circular practices, we can reduce the negative impact of traditional linear economic models on the environment. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the world is generating only 26% of total energy production from circular practices, which positively impacts environmental health. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the empirical estimation of circular practices regarding energy on the environment. The current study focuses on the association between the circular economic index, economic growth, trade, digitization, energy use, and the financial development index on the environment in 29 high-income countries from 1990 to 2019. The study employs the second-generation econometric technique Driscoll-Kraay to empirically estimate the association among the variables of interest after confirming cross-sectional dependency within the data set. The study findings reveal that circular practices improve high-income countries' environmental conditions. Furthermore, the study confirms the association between economic growth, financial development index, energy use, trade, and digitization on the environment, and it leads to a more sustainable situation. Policies are drawn based on findings for policymakers toward a sustainable world.

Unraveling the South Asian enigma: concurrent manifestations of child anthropometric failures and their determinants in selected South Asian countries.

Malnutrition among children is pervasive in South Asia and there are also reports of overnutrition. To better understand this phenomenon, we need a composite measure. However, the existing measures such as CIAF (Composite Index of Anthropometric Failure) and its revised version have ignored the overnutrition aspect of the phenomenon. This study proposes an extended version of CIAF which also considers overnutrition. This new measure was compared with the existing measures by using data from 1990 to 2018 for three selected South Asian countries including Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. We also examined the effects of socioeconomic and environmental variables on the outcome variable. The results reveal that the new measure (ECIAF) is better at measuring the phenomena. The burden of overall malnutrition has been decreased in the region. However, an increase in the concomitant prevalence of wasting and underweight is observed in both Pakistan and India and stunting and overweight is observed only in India. Besides, political stability, prevalence of undernourishment, anemia in children, mother's education, household size, dependency ratio, air pollution and unimproved sanitation are significantly correlated with childhood malnutrition. The findings also testified to long-run cointegrating relationship among the variables.

Do natural disasters affect economic growth? The role of human capital, foreign direct investment, and infrastructure dynamics.

Natural disasters do occur and have become a global problem due to increasing intensity. Developing countries are mostly affected due to natural disasters owing to a poor environment, feeble adaptation, impoverished socioeconomic conditions, poor infrastructure, limited resources, and unstable institutions. The SDG 11.5 target which highlights the mitigation of loss due to natural disasters--remains crucial to achieving sustainable cities and human settlements--but the literature is limited on this scope. Thus, this research contributes to the literature by incorporating an infrastructure index, foreign direct investment (FDI), human capital index, globalization, and capital formation into the disaster-growth debate across four-income groups in 98 countries from 1995 to 2019. We developed infrastructure and human capital indices using a standard procedure across all income groups. The two-step generalized method of moments employed herein confirmed the income reduction effect of natural disasters. While the economic cost of natural disasters is relatively high in low-income countries and mild in high- and upper-middle-income countries. Besides, infrastructural development, FDI, human capital, globalization, and gross fixed capital formation also affect economic growth across income groups. Thus, the enhancement of socio-economic policies could decline economic losses, especially in vulnerable and poor settlements in developing countries.

Estimation of economic, environmental, and social efficiency for sustainable development in G-8 and SAARC countries: a data envelopment analysis.

In the recent era, economic growth is not enough to represent sustainable development. Sustainable development has three dimensions (i.e., economic, social, and environment). This study estimated the economic, social, and environmental efficiency using data from 2000 to 2021. Input-oriented data envelopment analysis shows strong heterogeneity across developed (G-8) and developing countries (SAARC). There is a potential to increase economic and environmental efficiency in the G-8 and SAARC countries. The average economic efficiencies are 0.682 and 0.414, which implies the possibility of the same output (GDP/capita) by using 31.8% and 58.6% fewer inputs in G-8 and SAARC countries, respectively. The social efficiency score is more than 0.980 in both panels. The average environmental efficiencies are 0.712 and 0.724, which implies that selected countries can obtain the same output (CO2 emission reduction) by using 28.8% and 27.6% fewer inputs in G-8 and SAARC countries, respectively. The top three economically efficient countries are (a) the USA, the UK, and Japan in the G-8 panel and (b) Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan in the SAARC panel. The top three environmentally efficient countries are (a) France, the UK, and Italy in the G-8 panel and (b) Afghanistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh in the SAARC panel. It is recommended to adopt suitable policies to reduce emission, minimize waste, efficient utilization of resources, increase forest cover, and incentive for clean technologies. It is suggested to promote renewable energy through the provision of micro-credit to the poor, subsidizing renewable energy technologies, implementation of stringent environmental policies, and increasing awareness. It is essential to invest in eco-friendly and innovative technologies; thus, the government should encourage green practices in production. Human development is recommended to increase the living standard and healthy life. The government should invest in the health system and conduct seminars on general health awareness. Investment in basic infrastructure (drinking water, sanitation, and clean fuel) is essential to increase the living standard. The G-8 countries should provide financial and technological help to the SAARC countries.

The role of infrastructure, socio-economic development, and food security to mitigate the loss of natural disasters.

This study shows the impact of risk (hazard, exposure, and vulnerability) and resilience (infrastructure, information and communication technology, institutional quality, food security, women empowerment, economic performance, human capital, emergency workforce, and social capital) indicators on losses due to natural disasters in 24 high-income, 24 upper-middle-income, 30 lower-middle-income, and 12 low-income countries from 1995 to 2019. It develops a new disaster risk index and disaster resilience index using standard index-making procedure (indicators selection, winsorization, normalization, aggregation). The generalized additive modeling was used to explore the non-linear relationship between response and explanatory variables. There exists a positive link between damage due to natural disasters and hazard index (all panels) and exposure index in high-income countries. The decrease in damage due to natural disasters was observed due to an increase in infrastructure (upper-middle-, lower-middle-, and low-income countries), information and communication technology (high-income countries), institutional quality (high-income countries), food security (high- and upper-middle-income countries), women empowerment (lower-middle-income countries), economic performance (high- and low-income countries), human capital (low-income countries), and emergency workforce (upper-middle and lower-middle-income countries). The governments should enhance disaster resilience through Sendai Framework, having seven targets and four priority areas to increase disaster resilience.

Zig-zag technology adoption behavior among brick kiln owners in Pakistan.

This study uses the theory of planned behavior to examine the individual's intentions and zig-zag kiln technology adoption attitude in responding to carbon emissions in Pakistan. This study is based on cross-sectional data and a representative sample of 335 brick kilns owners from 11 districts of Punjab province of Pakistan is collected. Partial least squares structural equation modeling technique was used for the analysis. Results depicted that environmental concern and self-efficacy have a significant influence on attitude toward sustainable technology while subjective norms have a significant effect on intentions toward zig-zag kiln technology. A 1% increase in environmental concern and self-efficacy increases sustainable environmental technology by 24% and 58%, respectively. Furthermore, perceived behavioral control and intentions also significantly impact adoption attitude, and a 1% increase in perceived behavioral control and intentions increase the zig-zag kiln adoption attitude by 68% and 30%, respectively. Results depicted that adoption attitude is significantly determined by these explanatory variables. The study's findings provided new evidence for the government to place more emphasis on enhancing kiln owners' attitudes, social norms, and perceived behavioral control, which would lead towards the adoption of this new technique.

Empirical analysis of CO2 emissions and sustainable use of energy sources in Pakistan.

Pakistan is experiencing increasing CO2 emissions in contrast with other regions of the world. The country is also facing the problems of low economic growth, energy poverty, and environmental pollution. The objective of the study is to analyze economic growth of Pakistan and obtain some alternate sources of production for sustainable environment. Time series data of Pakistan from 1985 to 2018 is used. In order to estimate direct and substitution effect among energy and non-energy factors on economic growth, translog functional form is used. The presence of multicollinearity among explanatory variables approves to employ ridge regression. Capital per worker has the highest elasticity (0.1531) among all variables followed by consumption of oil (0.0571), natural gas (0.0333), technology (0.0329), and hydroelectricity (0.02). Average output elasticity for oil, natural gas, hydroelectricity, capital per worker, and technology are 0.4474, 0.3127, 0.433, 1.0037, and 0.2309, respectively. Technical progress of variables is ranked as capital per worker, oil consumption, natural gas consumption, hydroelectricity, and technology. Relatively lower but efficient substitution between oil and natural gas provides opportunity to save huge foreign exchange on import of oil. Investment on capital per worker in transport, power, fertilizer, and industrial sectors can reduce the demand of oil and natural gas which would eventually lower carbon dioxide emissions in the country. Increasing 10% investment on capital/worker would mitigate 208.283 million tons of carbon dioxide. Energy inputs are substitutes; therefore, mega hydropower projects and small renewable projects may be launched to cope with energy poverty and environmentally sustainable challenges.

Renewable energy, economic development, and ecological footprint nexus: fresh evidence of renewable energy environment Kuznets curve (RKC) from income groups.

This study aims to measure the association of real economic growth per capita, renewable energy consumption, and financial development with ecological footprints (EFP) across the 155 countries of four different income groups over the period of 1990-2017. For the analysis, the unit root tests allowing cross-sectional dependency, Westerlund cointegration test, common correlated effect of mean group, augmented mean group, mean group, and Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel causality test are used. The results verify both the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and renewable energy environment Kuznets curve (RKC) hypotheses in the high-income group; however, other groups have not shown reliable results. Moreover, it is observed that the existence of RKC is a turning point for high-income countries, and it takes place before the turning point of the forthcoming EKC. Besides, empirical outcomes endorse the presence of long-run equilibrium and indicate that financial development has a negative and significant effect on the EFP in the case of the high-income group. In contrast, upper-middle- and lower-middle-income groups show the insignificant relationship with the dependent variable. Likewise, financial development has a positive and significant association with EFP for the low-income group. Conversely, biomass energy has a negative relationship with EFP in high- and lower-middle-income groups, while a positive association has been observed for the remaining two groups. We suppose that the study outcomes would guide the policymakers in decision-making regarding the development and usage of renewable energy to prevent environmental damages.

Exploring the linkage among energy intensity, carbon emission and urbanization in Pakistan: fresh evidence from ecological modernization and environment transition theories.

This study uses ecological modernization and environmental transition theories to estimate the interaction among energy intensity, carbon emission and urbanization for the period of 1980-2017. We have systematically examined the empirical connections among emission, urbanization, income per capita, imports, exports, energy use, trade openness and energy intensity. The Johnson co-integration and Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) causality methods are employed for the sake of analysis. Overall findings confirm the dynamic and U-shaped relationship between emission and urbanization, and carbon emission and income per capita. The empirical results of urbanization, inflation and financial development illustrate positive association with the energy intensity, whereas trade openness, labour force participation and carbon emission show a negative association with the dependent variable. Moreover, outcomes of causality analysis provide evidence of varied causality link among the variables across the models. The study provides the implications for the decision makers in Pakistan to choose new urbanization patterns that are less reliant on energy consumption.