The relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation: could West African countries benefit from EKC hypothesis?

There are growing concerns about environmental degradation and economic expansions in West Africa. Although there are several growth-environmental studies in Africa, there is limited empirical research exploring West African countries' potential of benefiting from the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis, with the few studies on this subject reporting diverse results based on selected West African countries. To fill this gap, this study explored the relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation within the EKC framework using 16 West African countries sub-grouped into low-income countries (LICs) and lower-middle-income countries (LMICs) between 1990 and 2018. This study implemented second-generation panel econometric estimators that are robust to cross-sectional dependent and parameter heterogeneity. The empirical results revealed that the data is cross-sectionally dependent, heterogeneous, integrated of order one, 1(1), and cointegrated. Controlling for other environmental determinants, panel estimates from the Augmented Meant Group and Common Correlated Effect Mean Group estimators revealed that economic growth accelerates environmental degradation in West African countries, with a greater impact on LMICs, followed by LICs in West Africa. The results also showed that West African countries especially LMICs could benefit from the EKC hypothesis. On the other hand, growth-environmental degradation among LICs in West Africa shows a monotonous increasing relationship. We found strong evidence to support for feedback hypothesis between economic growth and environmental degradation in LMICs, LICs, and West Africa as a whole. Based on the findings, policy recommendations that consider both LMICs and LICs and West Africa as a whole were offered to policymakers.