How natural disasters affect carbon emissions: the global case

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has once again made the impacts of natural disasters a hot topic in academia. The environmental impacts of natural disasters, however, remain unsettled in the existing literature. This study aims to investigate the impact of natural disasters on CO 2 emissions. For this purpose, we employ a panel dataset covering 138 countries over the period 1990–2018 and two dynamic panel estimation methods. Then, considering the differences in CO 2 emissions across various countries, we run a panel quantile regression to examine the asymmetry in the nexus between natural disasters and CO 2 emissions. We also discuss the mediating effects of energy consumption between natural disasters and CO 2 emissions. After conducting a series of robustness checks, we confirm that our results are stable and convincing. The empirical results indicate that natural disasters significantly reduce CO 2 emissions. Nevertheless, the impact of natural disasters on CO 2 emissions is asymmetric across different quantiles of CO 2 emissions. Furthermore, the technology level serves as an important moderating factor between natural disasters and CO 2 emissions. The mediating effect results reveal that natural disasters not only directly reduce CO 2 emissions but also indirectly promote carbon reduction by restraining energy consumption. Finally, several policy implications are provided to reduce CO 2 emissions and the damage caused by natural disasters.

A Deep Dive into Indonesia's CO2 Emissions: The Role of Energy Consumption, Economic Growth and Natural Disasters

“…Lastly, unidirectional causality is found from natural disasters to CO2 emissions, implying that events such as wildfires or volcanic eruptions can contribute to increased CO2 emissions. The result of this study is supported by [57][58][59]. Similarly, unidirectional causality from natural disasters to non-renewable energy consumption suggests that occurrences like landslides and earthquakes can disrupt the production and consumption of non-renewable energy sources.…”

“…This supposition argues disasters reduce economic activity and energy consumption, thereby decreasing CO2 emissions [53][54][55][56]. Analyzing 138 countries revealed that disasters substantially lower CO2 emissions by directly and indirectly reducing energy consumption, where technological progress strongly influences this trend [57]. Nevertheless, the precise mechanisms linking disasters and CO2 emissions remain unclear.…”

Natural Disasters, Economic Growth, and Carbon Emissions: Empirical Analysis of Chinese Data Based on a Nonlinear Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag Model

“…Dou et al used a set of panel data from 138 countries to test the relationships between natural disasters and carbon dioxide emissions through panel quantile regression. Their empirical results showed that natural disasters significantly reduced carbon emissions, where natural disasters directly reduced carbon emissions but also indirectly contributed to carbon reduction by curbing energy consumption, and the level of technology was an important moderator of the relationship between natural disasters and carbon emissions [22]. In the current research literature, there is a lack of reliable conclusions on how natural disasters affect carbon emissions.…”

“…In particular, we constructed an econometric analysis model with carbon dioxide emissions as the explanatory variable, and GDP and natural disasters as the main explanatory variables. According to previous research by Baig [4], Dou [22], Dong [25], and Kasman et al [26], new energy was also included in the analysis framework, and we defined the multi-factor theoretical model of carbon emission as follows:…”

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