Enhancing governance for environmental sustainability in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

This study assesses whether improving governance standards affects environmental quality in 44 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2000–2012. The empirical evidence is based on generalized method of moments. Bundled and unbundled governance dynamics are used, notably: (i) political governance (consisting of political stability and “voice and accountability”); (ii) economic governance (entailing government effectiveness and regulation quality), (iii) institutional governance (represented by the rule of law and corruption-control); and (iv) general governance (encompassing political, economic, and institutional governance dynamics). The following hypotheses are tested: (i) Hypothesis 1 ( improving political governance is negatively related to carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions); (ii) Hypothesis 2 ( increasing economic governance is negatively related to CO2 emissions); and (iii) Hypothesis 3 ( enhancing institutional governance is negatively related to CO2 emissions). Results of the tested hypotheses show that the validity of Hypothesis 3 cannot be determined based on the results; Hypothesis 2 is not valid, while Hypothesis 1 is partially not valid. The main policy implication is that governance standards need to be further improved in order for government quality to generate the expected unfavorable effects on CO2 emissions.

Not all that glitters is gold: Political stability and trade in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…It follows that the findings can be logical and intuitive in the light of the negative skewness of the independent variable of interest. This explanation is consistent with Asongu and Odhiambo (2020d) who have established that governance standards need to be improved in SSA in order for government quality to promote the green economy in the sustainable development era.…”

Financial development, income inequality and carbon emissions in sub-Saharan African countries: A panel data analysis

“…The data for the control variables, which include mobile phone penetration and regulation quality, are obtained from the WDI and World Governance Indicators of the World Bank. The choice the mobile phone and regulation as control variables is consistent with recent CO 2 emissions literature (see Asongu, 2018a; Asongu and Odhiambo, 2020c). In this study, the coefficient of mobile phone penetration is expected to be positive and statistically significant, while the coefficient of the regulation quality is expected to have the opposite effect (see Asongu, 2018a).…”

“…In view of the aforementioned, the current study uses an extension of the difference GMM techniques by Roodman (2009a) to examine the relationship between financial development, income inequality and carbon emissions in 39 SSA countries during the period 2004 to 2014. 3 The choice of the underlying estimation approach is motivated by the fact that it has been documented to limit the proliferation of instruments and produce more robust estimates (Asongu and Odhiambo, 2020b, 2020c). The motivation for using the GMM in the current study is based on a number of justifications, which have been supported by previous studies, such as Asongu and Nwachukwu (2016), Tchamyou (2019a, 2019b) and Fosu and Abass (2019), among others.…”

Inequality, finance and renewable energy consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…The selection of these variables in the conditioning information set is informed by contemporary environmental sustainability literature Asongu & Odhiambo, 2020c). Before engaging the empirical results, it is worthwhile to clarify why only two elements are adopted in the conditioning information set.…”