How do income inequality, poverty and industry 4.0 affect environmental pollution in South Asia: New insights from quantile regression.

While many factors have been studied as potential causes of environmental degradation, the impact of poverty and inequality has been largely overlooked in the research. The Sustainable Development Goals are aligned with the intersection of poverty, inequality, and the environment. In addition, most previous research has used carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions as a surrogate for pollution. These gaps are filled by this study, which uses ecological footprint (a comprehensive measure of pollution) and CO2 emissions to examine the effects of income disparity and poverty on environmental pollution in 13 nations. Dynamic panel Quantile regression methods are used in this study because of their resilience to various econometric problems that can crop up during the estimate process. The empirical results reveal that the whole panel's carbon emissions and ecological footprint rise when income disparity and poverty exist. When the panel is subdivided, however, we see that income inequality reduces carbon emissions and environmental footprint for the wealthy but has the opposite effect on the middle class. While high-income households see no impact from poverty on their carbon emissions, middle-income households see an increase in both. Overall, the results of this study suggest that income disparity and poverty are major factors in ecological degradation. Therefore, initiatives to reduce environmental degradation should pay sufficient attention to poverty and inequality to achieve ecological sustainability.

Financial efficiency and CO2 emission in BRICS. Dose digital economy development matter?

When it comes to the environmental costs, environmental economists have tried to study the effects of the foreign direct investment-growth nexus, but they have ignored the crucial role that financial development and technical innovation play. Massive increases in energy consumption have contributed to environmental degradation in the BRICS nations, which have experienced rapid IND due to their robust economies. This study uses data from 1990 to 2021 to examine the relationship between carbon emissions in BRICS member nations and factors such as FDI, technological innovation, and economic growth. Within the panel nations, the results confirm a high cross-sectional reliance. The BRICS countries' financial development, technological innovation, and foreign direct investment all have a negative and statistically significant long-run association with CO2 emissions, according to the Augmented Mean Group (AMG) estimator. On the other hand, economic growth, TI, IND, and energy use all have positive and statistically significant associations with carbon emissions. This study's researchers choose to use the Dumitrescu and Hurlin panel causality test to look at the other way around. Economic growth (EG), Digital economic growth (DEG), Financial efficiency (FE), CO2 emissions (CO2), Industrialization (IND), Technological Innovation (TI), Foreign direct investment (FDI) and Inflation are all identified as having a bidirectional long-run causative relationship. In contrast, a unidirectional causal relationship is observed between FDI and CO2 emissions. To entice high-quality FDI, the BRICS member nations must advance their industries, financial institutions, and technological innovation. In addition, these nations need immediate legislative solutions because IND is a major cause of environmental damage.

How economic policy uncertainty and geopolitical risk affect environmental pollution: does renewable energy consumption matter?

Climate change traps heat, affecting various species in previously dry areas. Climate change brought on by emissions of greenhouse gases exacerbates problems such as severe storms, earthquakes, epidemics, and food distribution. The group of developed and developing countries, the world's biggest carbon emitters and most significant economies, is expertly planning to lessen its environmental challenges and contribute to achieving Sustainable Development Goals 7 and 13 set by the United Nations. This study uses the novel econometric methodologies of the dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS) estimator, the augmented mean group (AMG) estimator, and the fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS) estimate to examine the influence of economic policy uncertainty, renewable energy consumption, geopolitical risk, non-renewable energy consumption, and economic growth on ecological footprint from 2000 to 2021. The results reveal that the variables are co-integrated; REC reduces carbon emissions, EPU, geopolitical risk, and economic growth contribute to increasing carbon emissions, while urbanization improves carbon emission. Finally, the results suggest that the developed and developing economies can progress toward SDGs 7 and 13 by using renewable energy, lowering the geopolitical risk, effectively handling policy uncertainty, and reducing urbanization.

The determinants of carbon emissions in Belt and Road Initiative countries: analyzing the interactive role of information and communication technologies.

Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries have benefited greatly from the intelligent growth of the green economy made possible by the widespread adoption of internet and mobile phone technologies. In addition, renewable energy consumption endorses sustainable development. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to determine if the use of information and communication technology (ICT) and renewable energy consumption has an effect on sustainable development in BRI countries, while using the augmented mean group (AMG) model, AMG robustness test, and panel Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality test to get robust results. According to the results of the study, the information and communication technology, renewable consumption, human capital, and urbanization reduces the emission of carbon dioxide emission in BRI countries while economic growth enhances the CO2 emission. Therefore, it is recommended that BRI countries increase their inter-regional cooperation in order to boost investment in renewable energy, effectively use the spillover effect of technology and knowledge, and end the resource curse in environmental policy. Based on the results, the authors of this paper propose a number of important steps toward environmental sustainability.

Renewable energy electricity, environmental taxes, and sustainable development: empirical evidence from E7 economies.

Since globalization has increased both production and population, it has also increased environmental damage. This is why the development of renewable energy sources is crucial to the survival of humanity and the planet itself. Business patterns across the various nations, however, have changed significantly over time. This study examines how environmental taxes and renewable energy electricity affect renewable energy consumption in emerging seven economies by using panel dataset over the period of 1990 to 2020. Control variables include economic growth, carbon emissions, and environmental innovation. The results confirmed the presence of the long-run co-integration association, the existence of slope coefficient heterogeneity, and the dependency of cross sections using several panel data methods. Since the data was not normally distributed, a new technique known as method of moments quantile regression (MMQR) was applied in this study. The projected results contend that the major factors of renewable energy consumption are renewable energy output, environmental taxation, economic growth, and carbon emissions. However, eco-friendly innovations drastically cut back on the need for renewable energy. Bootstrap quantile regression verifies the results' reliability, and the panel Granger causality test corroborates that the listed factors have a bidirectional causal relationship with renewable energy usage. Furthermore, this research recommends boosting spending on renewable electricity, the environmental tax sector, and ecological innovation in order to expand the use of renewable energy.

Analysing the impact of geopolitical risk and economic policy uncertainty on the environmental sustainability: evidence from BRICS countries.

This key article seeks to empirically examine the impact of geopolitical risk, economic policy uncertainty (EPU), natural resources, and renewable energy on a country's ecological footprint, a proxy for environmental sustainability on a national scale. We conducted a quantitative study using the cross-sectional autoregressive distributive lag, augmented mean group, and common correlated effect mean group estimation models, as well as a few tests such as the CD test, Westerlund's co-integration, and CIPS and CADF unit root tests, beginning in January 2000 and ending in January 2021, to determine the data's reliability. The findings indicate that while GPR and renewable energy sources lessen the ecological footprint (EF), EPU and the use of non-renewable energy enhance the EF. The study's scope is narrowed to the BRICS nations, but its implications for expanding existing knowledge and shaping policy are enormous. The results can aid decision-makers in preparing for the possibility of unexpected events causing harm to the economy. The reliability of the evidence can be strengthened by employing more stringent research methods. This study's dimensions reflect the current research paradigm. The research has policy implications for achieving sustainable development goals in emerging economies.

Does Health Crises Effect Tourism: Role of Financial Inclusion for Green Financial Development.

Tourism is impacted by all types of crises, no matter how big or small. Even though many studies have examined tourism crises, most focus on the number of tourists arriving and departing. As a result of this lack of information, The adaptive differences in tourist behavior caused by various crises are not well understood. When it comes to inbound tourism, the financial and health-related crisis can significantly impact the tourist profile of the country and its visitors' spending habits. The findings show that the health crisis has a significant positive impact on tourism. Moreover, COVID_deaths and COVID_confirm_cases decrease the international tourism in developed and developing countries. According to the study's findings, tourists' sensitivity to crises varies between short- and long-haul markets. The evidence shows that financial inclusion has a significant positive impact on various aspects of tourism development in China. Hence, this article offers numerous policy and practical suggestions for sustainable tourism management.

Economic policy uncertainty and commodity market volatility: implications for economic recovery.

As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, most commodities experienced significant price drops, which were expected to continue well into 2020. As a result, the Markov switching model is used to study the influence of policy uncertainty and the COVID-19 pandemic on commodity prices in the USA. Commodity markets are stimulated by economic policy uncertainty, according to results from a two-state Markov switching model. In both high and low regimes, economic policy uncertainty (EPU) influences the commodity market, according to the study's findings. However, in the high regime, EPU has a greater influence on the energy and metal sectors. EPU has different influences on commodity markets in high- and low-volatility regimes, according to this study. There is a wide range of correlations between COVID-19 outcomes and EPU and how the prices of natural gas, oil, corn, silver, soybean, copper, gold, and steel respond to these tremors, in both high- and low-volatility tenure. Oil and natural gas, on the other hand, are unaffected by shifts in COVID-19 death rates under either regime. Results show that in both high- and low-volatility regimes, the demand and supply for most commodities are responsive to historical prices.