Environmental quality and energy transition prospects for G-7 economies: The prominence of environment-related ICT innovations, financial and human development.

Energy transition and reducing greenhouse gas emissions are fundamental to achieving sustainable development and ensuring a bright and healthy future. To contribute to the empirical literature on these objectives, this study explores the long-term influence of environment-related ICT innovations (EICT) on energy transition and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) in G-7 economies for the first time, while considering financial development (FD) and human development (HD). Additionally, the study investigates the moderating role of FD with EICT and HD in energy transition and GHGE. Using a Cross-Sectional Augmented Distributed Lag (CS-ARDL) technique to tackle the issues of cross-sectional dependency and slope heterogeneity, the study evaluated data from 1990 to 2020. The results indicate that EICT, FD, and HD have a significant positive effect on long-term energy transition, and mitigate GHGE in G-7 economies. Furthermore, the influence of EICT and HD on energy transition and GHGE is amplified in the presence of financial development, as evidenced by the moderating effect of FD. Based on these facts, the study suggests various policy measures, such as investing in clean technologies and education, to promote the energy transition and environmental quality in G-7 economies to achieve sustainable development goals.

Unveiling the environmental efficiency puzzle: Insights from global green innovations.

The latest surge of global uncertainty and disruptions in global supply networks put policymakers under pressure to emprise green innovations as a vital tool to address environmental concerns. However, producing green innovations doesn't always help in achieving environment-related sustainable development goals. Therefore, in this study, we endeavour to investigate to what extent green innovations are efficient in improving environmental efficiency. To this end, a network bias-corrected data envelopment analysis and clustering analysis is applied. The data used in this study covers 42 countries from different regions, spanning from 2000 to 2020. The results reveal that most countries have not made major advancements in environmental efficiency signifying the low level of green innovations utilization to achieve environment-related sustainable development goals (SDGs). Additionally, the results demonstrate a U efficiency curve for inputs-oriented green innovations efficiency over time, indicating that the initial stages of green innovations production are associated with a decreased return. However, over time, the efficiency exhibits an upward trend. The benchmarking analysis reveals that South American and European Union nations set the bar for other countries in terms of efficiently leveraging green innovations to achieve SDGs. Our findings also suggest that environmental efficiency is more dependent on green-supporting policies such as green energy production and green taxes. As a result, we conclude that achieving environmental SDGs while utilizing green innovations does not always result in the development of other SDGs. Therefore, policymakers need to prioritize pursuing a green developmental approach and supporting policies to achieve environment-related SDGs and other SDGs.

Changes in environmental degradation parameters in Bangladesh: The role of net savings, natural resource depletion, technological innovation, and democracy.

Most researchers consider CO2 emissions to be the primary indicator of environmental degradation. Similarly, ecological footprint appears to be a significant proxy for environmental degradation in recent research due to its multifaceted impact on the natural environment. With this in mind, this study investigates fluctuations in CO2 emissions and ecological footprint as indicators of environmental degradation in Bangladesh from 1980 to 2020, and how they are influenced by net savings, natural resource depletion, technological innovation, and democracy. The non-linear ARDL (NARDL)-based asymmetric analysis finds that positive changes in net savings, natural resource depletion, and democracy positively impact both parameters of environmental degradation in the long run. On the other hand, a positive change in technological innovation reduces these parameters in the long run. Likewise, negative changes in net savings and technological innovation reduce environmental degradation. In contrast, negative changes in natural resource depletion and democracy exacerbate these two parameters and degrade environmental quality in the long run. However, there are some variations in the short-run influence of the predictors on the predicted variable. Overall, the findings of this study suggest that policymakers must strategically exploit natural resources, net savings, technology diffusion, and democratic principles to preserve the natural environment in Bangladesh.

Corrigendum to "CO2 behavior amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom: The role of renewable and non-renewable energy development" [Renew. Energy 189 (2022) 492-501].

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2022.02.111.].

A comparative study of the effect of health insurance on women's use of health facility delivery: Evidence from demographic health survey in Benin Republic.

Studies in the Benin Republic have identified contextual factors that determine health facility delivery among women of reproductive age. However, it is not certain if the same set of factors predicts facility delivery for women who enrolled in health insurance and those who did not. The study seeks to compare the determinants of health facility delivery for mothers under health insurance and those that are not in the Benin Republic. The study used data for 33,078 women of reproductive age, drawn from the most recent Benin demographic and health survey (2017-18). The characteristics of the women were described using simple proportions and frequency. Binary Logistic regression was used to examine determinants of health facility delivery for both groups of women. The result showed that only 0.7% of the women were under health insurance coverage. The prevalence of health facility delivery was high in the enrolled group but not in the unenrolled group (98.3% vs. 87.8%). The uniform determinants of health facility delivery across the two groups were household wealth, education, employment, land/house ownership, media exposure, a minimum of four antenatal contacts, and place of residence. To improve the coverage of health facility delivery, a multi-pronged approach should be used to improve household socioeconomic status, encourage media use among women, expand education opportunities for women, and specifically target rural women in Benin.

CO2 behavior amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom: The role of renewable and non-renewable energy development.

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic since the end of 2019 has forced an unprecedented lockdown worldwide, and environmental quality was significantly affected by the pandemic and its induced lockdown. The objective of this study is to examine the role of renewable energy, non-renewable energy and COVID-19 case on CO2 emission in the context of United Kingdom. Several non-linear techniques such as Fourier ADL cointegration test, Non-Linear ARDL, Markov switching regression, and Breitung and Candelon (BC) causality test are employed to attain this objective. The result reveals that there is long run cointegration among the variables in this study. The results demonstrate that positive (negative) shift in renewable energy development decrease (increase) CO2 emissions while positive (negative) shocks in fossil fuel energy increase CO2 emissions. Moreover, negative (positive) variation in COVID case leads to a decrease (increase) in CO2 emissions. Moreover, an uni-directional causal impact was found to run from all the variables - renewable energy, fossil fuel, and COVID-19 case to CO2 emissions. Finally, several policy recommendations are provided.

Evaluating the symmetric and asymmetric effectiveness of low carbon energy consumption for ecological footprint in China: the role of environment-related technological innovation.

The objective of this study is to scrutinize the impact of low carbon energy consumption, environmental-related technological innovation, urbanization, economic growth, and trade on China's ecological footprint from 1980 to 2021. To investigate the nature of the long-term connections between the variables, we employ the symmetric and asymmetric autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique to explore the long- and short-run elasticities of coefficients. The results of ARDL and NARDL verified the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis in the long run in the presence of low carbon energy consumption. Moreover, the findings show that the positive part of low carbon energy consumption is negatively connected with the ecological footprint. Alternatively, the positive part of low carbon energy consumption is positively linked with the ecological footprint. The outcome highlights that environment-related technological innovation reduces the level of ecological footprint. Similarly, urbanization has a detrimental effect on the ecological footprint. Based on the estimated findings, it is suggested that China's economy should place a greater emphasis on increasing its level of investment in the low carbon energy sector and adopting severe environmental legislation to protect the economy from environmental burden.

Delay in diagnosis and treatment of benign paroxysmal positional vertigo in current practice.

BACKGROUND: More than 50% of the patients with peripheral vestibular disorders are suffering from Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV). Diagnosis is established by positive Dix-Halpike test and/or roll test. Objective of this study was to analyse the delay in diagnosis and treatment of BPPV in current practice and to suggest measures to avoid this delay. METHODS: One hundred and fifty two consecutive patients who were diagnosed and treated for BPPV in ENT department CMH Rawalpindi from Jan 2009 to Sep 2011 were selected for this study. All these patients were interviewed in detail regarding duration of vertigo, associated symptoms, visits to hospitals, investigations, treatment taken, cost of treatment and last or referral diagnosis before coming to our department. RESULTS: Out of 458 patients who presented with vertigo, 152 (33.2%) fulfilled the diagnostic criteria of BPPV. Male to female ratio was 1:1.17. Age range was 13-80 years and mean age 58.2 +/- 12.6. Posterior canal was affected in 96.7% and lateral canal in only 3.3%. Average duration between onset of first symptoms and diagnostic positional test was 19 months. One hundred and thirty eight patients have been visiting to general practitioners, various specialists, Homeopaths and Hakeems. Only 21% patients had visited to ENT specialists. 15.2% patients were already labelled correct diagnosis mostly by ENT specialists but Halpike test was done only in 8 patients and Epley's manoeuvre was tried in only four patients. 16.4% patients had undergone costly investigations like CT scan and MRI. Average cost on treatment before final diagnosis was Rs. 13,500 per patient. Particle repositioning procedure was successful in 84% patients in first attempt and 96% in two attempts. CONCLUSION: Though BPPV is a common and easily treatable condition, its diagnosis and treatment is delayed because of lack of awareness of this condition among doctors and patients. Clear understanding of the patho-physiology, diagnostic positional tests and canalith repositioning manoeuvre should be achieved through lectures and demonstrations.

Does the frequency of stochastic convergence in per capita ecological footprint matter?

Among the environmental economics research issues, the issue of convergence has received quite a lot of attention, which is also known as stationary analysis. In this research strand, whether shocks to the time series variable are permanent or temporary is tested via the unit root tests. In this study, based on the theory and empirical works of stochastic convergence, we evaluate the convergence for the BASIC member countries, including Brazil, South Africa, India, and China. We use a variety of methodologies to see whether the convergence of ecological footprint holds for these countries or not. We first use the wavelet decomposition technique to decompose the series into the short run, middle run, and long run, and then we run several unit root tests to confirm the stationarity property of the series. The methodologies implemented in this study allow us to apply econometric tests to the original series as well as to the decomposed series. The results of panel CIPS test demonstrate that the null hypothesis of unit root could be rejected for the short run but not for the middle and long run, implying that long-lasting impact might prevail due to any shocks to the ecological footprint in the middle and long run. The results for individual countries varied.

Disaggregated energy consumption, industrialization, total population, and ecological footprint nexus: evidence from the world's top 10 most populous countries.

High population, energy consumption, industrialization, and environmental degradation are inherently linked, making the study of ecological footprints in the most populous countries crucial for understanding their environmental impact and guiding efforts to minimize ecological degradation through sustainable resource management and conservation. Therefore, this study examines the effects of disaggregated energy consumption, industrialization, and total population on the ecological footprint of the world's top 10 most populous countries namely Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, and the USA, using data for the period of 1990-2020. The research employs Kao and Pedroni techniques of cointegration to determine whether the variables are cointegrated in the long run. The long-term equilibrium association is measured utilizing panel autoregressive distributed lag/pooled mean group (ARDL/PMG), and method of moment quantile (MMQ) regression methods. Furthermore, to test for the causal relationships between the selected variables, we used the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (D-H) panel causality method. The findings of the study reveal that renewable energy consumption, as well as GDP square, have a significant negative influence on ecological footprint, implying that renewable energy and GDP square reduce ecological footprint and thus enhance environmental quality. Furthermore, non-renewable energy, industrialization, total population, and GDP have a detrimental impact on environmental quality by increasing ecological footprint. It is also found that there is a one-way causality from non-renewable energy and industrialization to ecological footprint and a bidirectional causal relationship between ecological footprint and total population, GDP, and GDP2. Important policy implications are drawn based on the findings.

The roles of renewable energy, globalization, population expansion and deliberative democracy on Sustainable Development in South Asia.

South Asian region is extremely vulnerable to climate change which hampers its attainment of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). This study explores how sustainable development of South Asian nations is affected by the clean or renewable energy consumption, globalization, population growth and deliberative democracy. To tackle the effects of shocks within the cross-sectional units as well as to account for endogeneity, this study utilizes Common Correlated Effects Mean Group-Generalized Method of Moments (CCE-GMM) estimation technique proposed by Neal (2015). Common Correlated Effects Mean Group (CCE-MG) of Pesaran 2006 and Augmented Mean Group (AMG) by Eberhardt and Teal (2010) and Eberhardt and Bond (2009) techniques are also utilized as robustness checks. The empirical results reveal that the consumption of renewable or clean energy can significantly and positively affect sustainable development, implying that deploying clean energy technologies is helpful to achieve SDG agenda in South Asia. Population growth is found to be hampering sustainable development while deliberative democracy ensures this development. The impact of globalization on sustainable development was found to be negative yet insignificant. Bidirectional causal relationship was discovered between sustainable development and renewable energy, between population and sustainable development, between deliberative democracy and sustainable development and between deliberative democracy and globalization. Finally, the study provides policy directions to achieve sustainable development in South Asia via enhanced integration of renewable energy in the region's energy mix.

How do economic and financial factors influence green logistics? A comparative analysis of E7 and G7 nations.

Logistics is an important sector that supports every sector of the economy, and thus, the development of nations is impossible without efficient logistics. Alongside this, the logistics sector generates various kinds of emissions that degrade the quality of the environment. Developed countries are striving to introduce green logistics to avoid environmental damages caused by transportation. Also, developing countries will start focusing on developing green logistics sooner or later. Keeping this in view, a comparative panel study on the group of seven (G7) and Emerging Seven (E7) nations is conducted to study the impacts of various economic and financial variables on green logistics. The data from 1996 to 2018 is analyzed using some reliable methods that produce efficient and consistent results during heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence. The findings disclosed that cointegration is present in E7 and G7 panels. For E7 countries, the results disclosed that research and development (R&D), FDI, portfolio investment, and trade openness reduce green logistics. However, in the G7, R&D, FDI, portfolio investment, and trade increase green logistics. The empirical analysis did not show any meaningful impact of financial development and economic growth on green logistics in both groups of nations. Lastly, based on the comparative analysis, various policies are suggested for E7 to catch up with the G7 regarding logistics development. Also, policies for G7 are suggested to boost green logistics.

Nexus between environmental vulnerability and agricultural productivity in BRICS: what are the roles of renewable energy, environmental policy stringency, and technology?

This study aims to examine the effect of carbon dioxide emission and air pollution on agricultural productivity while accounting for the effect of renewable energy use, ICT, technological innovation, environmental policy stringency, and democracy for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) during the period 1990-2019. Several econometric procedures including mean group estimates are employed. The result suggests that both carbon dioxide emission and air pollution negatively affect the productivity of the agricultural sector. The effects of renewable energy, ICT, technological innovation, and democracy are found to be increasing agricultural productivity. Environmental policy stringency coefficient confirms the porter hypothesis. The result from the causality test suggests that bidirectional causality exists between CO2, PM2.5, renewable energy, technological innovation, ICT, and agricultural productivity. Finally, the study provides several policy suggestions for the governments of the BRICS economies in order to increase agricultural productivity while tackling the environmental vulnerability.

A Gender Differentiated Analysis of Healthy Life Expectancy in South Asia: The Role of Greenhouse Gas Emission.

The sluggish progress concerning SDG-9 and SDG 13 has made South Asia an epicentre of household and ambient greenhouse gases emissions. Furthermore, the regional progress concerning attainment of SDG-3 is considerably low. The major research objectives are twofold. First, to explore the impact of GHGs emissions from agriculture, transportation, and manufacturing sector on disaggregated life expectancy. Second, to examine the mitigating impact of renewable energy use, trade integration, and human capital development for practice policy recommendations. These research objectives are realized by employing recently advanced cross-sectional auto regressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) model on panel data of five South Asian countries such as Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka from 1990 to 2019. The estimation outcome reveals that the emissions from transportation, manufacturing, and agricultural sectors significantly deteriorate healthy life expectancy of male and female healthy life expectancy in South Asia with different intensity. Especially, we find that long-run impact of GHG is more profound on male healthy life expectancy than female life expectancy. The result further shows that renewable energy and human capital substantially improve healthy life expectancy, whereas the effects of trade integration are insignificant. The finding of moderating variables shows that renewable energy, human capital development, and trade integration have high potential to reduce GHGs emissions. The findings of this study urge South Asia for investments in human capital development and renewable energy along with fostering regional integration to decrease GHG and improve healthy life expectancy.

The roles of energy, natural resources, agriculture and regional integration on CO2 emissions in selected countries of ASEAN: does political constraint matter?

This paper empirically examines the effects of energy, natural resources, agriculture, political constraint and regional integration on CO2 emissions in four ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries of Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand. We distinguish between renewable and fossil fuel energy consumption to see their individual impacts on CO2 emissions. The study employed a panel data from 1990 to 2019 derived from sources such as World Development Indicators, which were then analysed using Common-Correlated Effect Mean Group (CCEMG) and Augmented Mean Group (AMG) estimates. The findings show that renewable energy consumption has a negative impact on CO2 emissions while fossil fuel energy degrades the environment. The role of natural resources was found to be favourable for environmental quality with the impact of agriculture being found to be detrimental. For regional trade integration, its influence was not significant enough to offset CO2 emission. Furthermore, we discovered that political constraint induces CO2 emission. Based on the result, it is recommended that the selected ASEAN countries promote the use of renewable energy and clean technologies in their manufacturing processes, conserve natural resources, adopt eco-friendly political policies and intensify regional integration to accelerate the achievement of the SDGs.

The potency of natural resources and trade globalisation in the ecological sustainability target for the BRICS economies.

The BRICS nations have yet to significantly contribute to achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 7 and 13. Dealing with this problem might necessitate a policy shift, which is the main topic of this research. Therefore, the current study scrutinizes the interrelationship between natural resources, energy, trade globalisation and ecological footprint using panel data from the period between 1990 and 2018 for the BRICS nations. To assess the interrelationship between ecological footprint and its determinants, we used the Cross sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) and common correlated effects. mean group (CCEMG) estimators. The findings show that economic progress, and natural resources lessen ecological quality, while renewable energy and trade globalization improves ecological quality in the BRICS nations. Based on these results, the BRICS nations need to upgrade their use of renewable energy sources and improve the structure of their natural resource endowments. Furthermore, trade globalisation necessitates immediate policy responses in these nations since it reduces ecological damage.

Powering environmental sustainability through renewable energy and natural resources: a Dynamic ARDL simulation approach.

The objective of this study is to examine the role of renewable energy consumption and natural resource rents along with control variables of globalization and economic growth on the environmental sustainability of Jordanian economy from 1985 to 2019. These variables have been selected based on theory and empirical literature. We apply a Dynamic Autoregressive Distributed Lag (D-ARDL) technique along with robustness checks of Fully modified OLS (FMOLS), Dynamic OLS (DOLS), and Canonical Cointegrating Regression (CCR) techniques in order to achieve the above goal. The result from the analysis confirms that the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) is not valid for the Jordan in either long or short term. Our estimation results also confirm the highly significant and negative impact of renewable energy on CO2 emissions in both the long and short term. However, both natural resource rents and globalization are significant and positive in the long run, implying that these variables are detrimental to the environmental quality. The interaction analysis presents detrimental effect of globalization in terms of renewable energy while it shows beneficial effect of globalization in terms of natural resource for environmental quality. The frequency domain causality result shows causality at different frequencies across the variables. Based on the results, several policy directions are provided in order to achieve environmental sustainability in Jordan.

Formulating ecological sustainability policies for India within the coal energy, biomass energy, and economic globalization framework.

The betterment of environmental conditions is widely recognized as a significant priority for India, which is a critical aspect of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As an emerging economy, pursuing economic expansion is paramount, requiring significant amount of energy and a degree of openness to other nations. Meanwhile, the nation's energy demands are heavily met by the usage of biomass and coal energy sources. Furthermore, the nation is part of the top consumer of biomass and coal energy globally. However, over the last 50 years, the level of ecological footprint in India has surged by about 82%, despite the country's commitment to achieving environmental sustainability, which tends to raise concerns such as: What is the role of India's major energy sources, biomass, and coal energy, towards ecological sustainability? Does economic globalization promote and hinder India's environmental sustainability goals? As a result, this current study offers answers to these concerns by investigating the effect of economic globalization, coal energy, and biomass energy on the ecological footprint in India while controlling economic growth. Using the dynamic ARDL to analyze the dataset from 1970 to 2018, the result suggests that biomass energy and economic globalization improve ecological quality. However, economic growth and coal energy impede ecological quality in India. Furthermore, we adopted the time-varying causality test solely to understand the causality analysis, which established that economic globalization, biomass energy, economic growth, and coal energy could forecast the future direction of the ecological footprint.

Analyzing economic growth, eco-innovation, and ecological quality nexus in E-7 countries: accounting for non-linear impacts of urbanization by using a new measure of ecological quality.

The rising urban population and accelerated resource consumption pose major environmental challenges. Given that around 75% of global resources are consumed in urban areas, understanding the true association between urbanization (UR) and ecological quality is necessary for better urban strategies. Alongside this, eco-innovation (ECO) can limit environmental pollution and thus, it is the cornerstone of environmental policies. On that note, this research discloses the nexus between eco-innovation, economic growth (EGR), and ecological quality by considering the non-linear effects of UR in the emerging seven (E-7) nations from 1992 to 2018. Unlike previous literature, the newly developed indicator of ecological quality (the load capacity factor (LCF)) is adopted to understand the connection between UR, eco-innovation, and ecological quality since this new comprehensive indicator is based on both biocapacity and ecological footprint (EF). In the methodology, the "Continuously Updated-Fully Modified" (CuP-FM) test is used since this method offers diverse benefits for panel data estimation by accounting for major panel data estimation issues including autocorrelation, endogeneity, heteroscedasticity, fractional integration, and cross-sectional dependence. The empirical estimates unveiled that the current levels as well as high levels of UR limit the LCF. This evidence suggests that UR in the E-7 nations expands ecological degradation. This finding contradicts the assertions of ecological modernization theory that expanding urbanization brings some ecological benefits. Similarly, economic growth alleviates ecological quality. However, eco-innovation and agricultural land (AGL) contribute to enhancing the LCF and promoting ecological quality. Further, UR and eco-innovation Granger cause the LCF. Lastly, comprehensive urban environmental strategies are discussed to promote sustainable urbanization backed by eco-innovation.

Inequality consequences of natural resources, environmental vulnerability, and monetary-fiscal stability: a global evidence.

Despite making significant progress in reducing poverty over the last several decades, the world has witnessed persistent surge in global inequality. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between natural resource, environmental vulnerability, monetary-fiscal stability, and inequality in a global perspective during 2005 to 2019 for 61 countries. We distinguish between consumption and income inequality to see whether the variables under study have different implications for different measurement of inequality. The study employs Driscoll-Kraay standard error method which can account for the cross-sectional dependence between the countries. The study divides 61 countries according to the World Bank income classifications to provide evidence of heterogeneity in the sample economies. The main finding highlights that natural resources induce both consumption and income inequality whereas greenhouse gas emissions have been found to reduce the inequality of both types. Quality of government and access to electricity decrease consumption and income inequality while technological innovation and monetary-fiscal stability have incremental impacts on inequality. The coefficient of natural disaster has been shown to be positive for consumption inequality but negative and insignificant for income inequality. When analyzing moderating impacts, we find that quality of government cannot moderate the positive impact of natural resources on consumption inequality, but it can exacerbate the resources' impact on income inequality. The result for sub-sample group also differs for consumption and income inequality. The study recommends management of natural resources in a sustainable way with the help of good governance.