An environmental perspective of energy consumption, overpopulation, and human capital barriers in South Asia.

Prior literature is substantive in highlighting the nexus between pollutant and socio-economic predictors; however, the role of human interaction has not been sufficiently explored. Thus, the present study examines the validity of the environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in the presence of energy consumption, overpopulation, and human capital index in five South Asian countries. It employs fixed effects, random effects, and dynamic panel causality techniques with a set of panel data from 1972 to 2021. The baseline results validate the existence of the EKC hypothesis in the recipient panel. Nevertheless, the findings reveal that energy consumption and population density have positive effects, while human capital has negative impacts on CO2 emissions. Furthermore, the study observes that energy consumption and per capita GDP have a significant causal link with CO2 emissions, whereas CO2 emissions are evident to have causality with population density and human capital index. The results are robust and suggest that the consolidation of an effective regulatory framework and technological improvements are substantial measures to improve environmental quality in South Asia. Moreover, allocating sufficient resources to uplift contemporary educational and health status would be imperative to improving environmental quality as aspired to by the Paris Agreement.

The dynamic impact of renewable energy consumption, trade, and financial development on carbon emissions in low-, middle-, and high-income countries.

The present study confronts potential theoretical argument of dynamic and non-linear relationship between [Formula: see text] emissions, renewable energy consumption, trade, and financial development by using quantile regression that accounts for the role of development in explaining the stated nexus. The results show that renewable energy consumption reduces [Formula: see text] emissions in the short run in low-, middle-, and high-income countries. [Formula: see text] emissions plumet as country open up for trade and expand financial services for their people. It is found that trade openness and financial development decrease [Formula: see text] emissions at upper quantile in low-income countries. In the middle-income countries, the findings are not much different as reported in case of low-income countries. In the high-income countries, renewable energy consumption and trade openness lead to decrease in [Formula: see text] emissions at all income quantiles. The Dumitrescu-Hurlin (D-H) panel causality test draws a sturdy support of bi-directional causation between renewable energy and [Formula: see text] emissions in low-income countries. Based on this analysis, some important policy implications can be drawn. First, in advanced countries, restrictions on renewable energy do not have significant effect on environmental condition. However, in low-income countries, adoption of renewable energy can significantly reduce [Formula: see text] emissions. Second, low-income countries may combat rise in [Formula: see text] emissions by introducing new technologies in exploiting trade potentials that are necessary to acquire resources to adopt clean energy. Third, energy policies should be framed based on the stage of development of a country, share of renewable energy in its total energy mix, and environmental condition of the country.

Investigating the energy-environmental Kuznets curve under panel quantile regression: a global perspective.

Energy is regarded as an engine of economic growth and an important ingredient of human survival and development, but it can lead to deterioration of environmental quality. The study investigates the energy environmental Kuznets curve (EEKC) during the 1990-2017 period for 144 countries using models for total energy, renewable energy, and non-renewable energy consumptions. We employ panel mean and quantile regressions, accounting for individual and distributional heterogeneities. It is found that the EEKC sustains among the higher middle-income countries while it cannot be verified at some lower-income quantiles due to the heterogeneous nature of the different groups of countries. The relationship between economic growth, total energy, and non-renewable energy consumption is positive and non-linear. The quantile estimations revealed mixed (positive and non-linear, inverted U-shape, U-shape, and N-shape) EEKC. The maximum and minimum turning values of GDP per capita for total energy consumption (is 43,201.58 and 89,630.49), for renewable energy consumption (53,535.07 and 89,869.41), and for non-renewable energy consumption (42,188.16 and 89,487.71). Urbanization and population growth had positive impacts on energy consumption while these effects become more significant as moving from low to high-income quantiles. The study implies that while the developed nations can adopt energy-efficient policies without compromising on the growth momentum and environment, this might be not recommended for the developing nations and it would be preferable for these countries to "grow first and clean up later." The study indicates the importance of the developed nations to support the developing countries to achieve economic growth along the EEKC by transferring energy-efficient technologies.

A gender-specific assessment of tobacco use risk factors: evidence from the latest Pakistan demographic and health survey.

BACKGROUND: The high prevalence of tobacco use in Pakistan poses a substantial health and economic burden to Pakistani individuals, families, and society. However, a comprehensive assessment of the key risk factors of tobacco use in Pakistan is very limited in the literature. A better understanding of the key risk factors of tobacco use is needed to identify and implement effective tobacco control measures. OBJECTIVES: To investigate the key socioeconomic, demographic, and psychosocial determinants of tobacco smoking in a recent large nationally representative sample of Pakistani adults. METHODS: N = 18,737 participants (15,057 females and 3680 males) from the 2017-18 Pakistan Demographic Health Survey, aged 15-49 years, with data on smoking use and related factors were included. Characteristics of male and female participants were compared using T-tests (for continuous variables) and χ2-tests (for categorical variables). Multivariable logistic regression models were used to identify gender-specific risk factors of tobacco use. The Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve test was used to evaluate the predictive power of models. RESULTS: We found that the probability of smoking for both males and females is significantly associated with factors such as their age, province/region of usual residence, education level, wealth, and marital status. For instance, the odds of smoking increased with age (from 1.00 [for ages 15-19 years] to 3.01 and 5.78 respectively for females and males aged 45-49 years) and decreased with increasing education (from 1.00 [for no education] to 0.47 and 0.50 for females and males with higher education) and wealth (from 1.00 [poorest] to 0.43 and 0.47 for richest females and males). Whilst the odd ratio of smoking for rural males (0.67) was significantly lower than that of urban males (1.00), the odds did not differ significantly between rural and urban females. Finally, factors such as occupation type, media influence, and domestic violence were associated with the probability of smoking for Pakistani females only. CONCLUSIONS: This study identified gender-specific factors contributing to the risk of tobacco usage in Pakistani adults, suggesting that policy interventions to curb tobacco consumption in Pakistan should be tailored to specific population sub-groups based on their sociodemographic and psychosocial features.

Do geopolitical risk and energy consumption contribute to environmental degradation? Evidence from E7 countries.

Environmental degradation is frequently cited as one of the eminent issues in the modern era. To limit environmental degradation, prior literature discerns several macroeconomic, socio-economic, and institutional factors that affect environmental degradation. However, the relationship between geopolitical risk and environmental degradation is understudied in the previous literature. To fill this gap, the inquiry at hand aims to scrutinize the influence of geopolitical risk on environmental degradation for E7 countries while controlling the effect of renewable energy, non-renewable energy, and GDP. Further, we utilize both the ecological footprint and CO2 emissions as proxies of environmental degradation and employ second-generation panel methods for robust findings. In addition to this, the present study uses augmented mean group (AMG) estimator to provide long-run relationship among the selected variables. The findings from the AMG estimator expound that there exists environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for E7 countries. Moreover, renewable energy ameliorates environmental quality because it plunges both ecological footprint and CO2 emissions. On the contrary, non-renewable energy consumption escalates both ecological footprint and CO2 emissions. Finally, geopolitical risk tends to decrease CO2 emissions as well as ecological footprint. Our findings deduce a few policy implications to replenish environmental quality. For instance, the share of renewables in the energy mix should be surged to ameliorate the environmental quality. Further, to control both the geopolitical risk and environmental degradation at the same time, policymakers should put forward reforms and initiatives (e.g., policies to escalate R&D, technological innovations, and tax exemptions on imports of renewables) that can help to improve environmental quality without affecting geopolitical risk. At times of low geopolitical risk, environmental degradation will surge; therefore, the rate of environmental control taxes should be increased by the policymakers.

Testing dependence patterns of energy consumption with economic expansion and trade openness through wavelet transformed coherence in top energy-consuming countries.

Economic growth and trade openness are closely linked with energy consumption and hence have environmental consequences. Many studies have investigated the relationship between these variables. Two weaknesses in empirical literature on energy-growth nexus are prominent. First majority of the studies are conducted on different groups of countries; however, no study has focused the top energy-consuming countries despite their immense importance in the context of energy-growth nexus. Second, this literature cannot simultaneously capture time and frequency domains, short- and long-run dependence, and lagging and leading effects among the variables. Furthermore, environmental impacts of increased energy consumption emerging from trade base economic growth are less studied. This study employs wavelet transformed coherence method to examine dependence partners of energy consumption with economic expansion and trade openness in top 10 energy-consuming countries. This methodology avoids the unrealistic assumption of stationarity of the variables due to favorable scaling tool and unveils the time frequency dependence among variables with more reliability as it accounts for the seasonality, cycles, or trends extracted from the transformation change over time. Furthermore, this technique has the novelty to handle data when its transformation from one-dimensional to bi-dimensional time-frequency sphere is allowed. Findings reveal a positive influence of economic growth and trade on energy consumption in many countries. The wavelet transformed coherence indicates short-run coherence among energy consumption and economic growth of all the top 10 energy-consuming countries. Long-run dependence among energy consumption and economic growth exists in case of China, India, Brazil, and South Korea with mostly leading role of energy consumption over economic growth. The findings of the study reiterate the importance of energy consumption in the development of these economies and suggest that energy policies aimed at improving efficiency in the production and consumption of energy will not hurt economic growth.

Does the environmental Kuznets curve reliably explain a developmental issue?

This study aims to achieve two main objectives; first, it provides a brief but critical description of the empirical literature on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) in terms of history, origin, micro-foundations, measurement of environmental degradation, methodologies and samples. Second, it examines the curious attraction of the EKC despite considerable criticism it has attracted over time. The motivation stems from the mixed results probably due to different econometric techniques, sample periods, country-specific factors and environmental indicators used to test EKC. The study concludes that of course, the EKC has attracted a great deal of criticism, but its survival power is undeniable. Different taxonomies of the approaches to explain income-environment nexus have been established by various commentators producing different results under different scenarios. It is still equally important among researchers to interpret the relationship between income and pollution due to its charismatic characteristics; therefore, the empirical literature on EKC continues to grow despite criticism on its validity and assumptions. However, we should not be convinced that economic growth on its own will solve environmental ills. The proposition that affluent countries will invest heavily to level off and gradually contain their environmental pollution should not be persuaded. Therefore, policymakers must not encourage unlimited economic growth to cure environmental problems.

Impact of agricultural land use and economic growth on nitrous oxide emissions: Evidence from developed and developing countries.

The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) establishes a hypothetical link between economic growth and environmental degradation and has been tested empirically using various measures of pollution, including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions. However, few studies have focused on N2O emissions, despite their projected lifetime of 114 years and 300 times greater warming potential than CO2. Employing panel data for the period 1980 to 2012, this study uses the EKC to investigate N2O emissions, including those resulting from agriculture, economic growth, agricultural land use, and exports. Two groups of data are extracted from the panel data: the first group contains the top 15 countries, ranked by N2O emissions, measured in thousand metric tons of CO2, while the second group contains the top 18 countries, ranked by share of agriculture in GDP. A pooled mean group approach developed by Pesaran et al. (1999) is used to determine whether long-run relationships exist between the variables after determined by the Hausman test. The results show that N2O emissions and economic growth are co-integrated in both panels, providing evidence in favour of the EKC. In addition, agricultural land use has a positive and significant effect on N2O emissions. That is, if countries wish to reduce their N2O emissions or agricultural N2O emissions, they should optimize or reduce the use of agricultural land.