School of Business and Economics, North South University, Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Department of Finance & International Trade, Kongju National University, Gongju, South Korea.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2021 Sep;28(36):49967-49988. doi: 10.1007/s11356-021-13381-z. Epub 2021 May 4.
Environmental sustainability has become a major concern for policymakers across the globe. In this regard, understanding the factors responsible for environmental degradation is particularly important for developing nations. Against this backdrop, this study aims to evaluate the impacts of environmental regulations and other vital macroeconomic aggregates on the ecological footprints in the context of four fossil fuel-dependent South Asian countries: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The major findings from the econometric analysis, accounting for cross-sectional dependency, slope heterogeneity, and structural break issues in the data, reveal that environmental regulations portray significant roles in directly and indirectly reducing the ecological footprints across South Asia. Besides, the elasticity estimates verify the authenticity of the environmental Kuznets curve and the pollution haven hypotheses. On the other hand, non-renewable and renewable energy consumptions are found to increase and decrease the ecological footprints, respectively. Moreover, renewable energy use and environmental regulations are found to jointly reduce the ecological footprints further. More importantly, environmental regulations are predicted to reduce the adverse environmental impacts of economic growth, non-renewable energy use, and foreign direct investment inflows while increasing the favorable environmental impacts associated with renewable energy use. Furthermore, the country-specific impacts of environmental regulations on the ecological footprints are found to be more or less homogeneous to the corresponding panel estimates. The environmental Kuznets curve and pollution haven hypotheses are evidenced to hold for the majority of the four South Asia nations. In line with these findings, several relevant policy-level suggestions are put forward.
环境可持续性已成为全球政策制定者的主要关注点。在这方面，了解导致环境恶化的因素对于发展中国家尤为重要。有鉴于此，本研究旨在评估环境法规和其他重要宏观经济总量对四个依赖化石燃料的南亚国家（孟加拉国、印度、巴基斯坦和斯里兰卡）生态足迹的影响。在考虑数据中的横截面相关性、斜率异质性和结构断裂问题的计量经济学分析中得出的主要结论表明，环境法规在直接和间接减少南亚地区的生态足迹方面发挥了重要作用。此外，弹性估计验证了环境库兹涅茨曲线和污染避难所假说的真实性。另一方面，发现不可再生和可再生能源消费分别增加和减少生态足迹。此外，发现可再生能源的使用和环境法规共同进一步减少生态足迹。更重要的是，预计环境法规将减少经济增长、不可再生能源使用和外国直接投资流入对环境的不利影响，同时增加可再生能源使用对环境的有利影响。此外，还发现环境法规对生态足迹的具体影响或多或少与相应的面板估计一致。环境库兹涅茨曲线和污染避难所假说得到了四个南亚国家中大多数国家的证实。根据这些发现，提出了若干相关的政策建议。
