Murshed Muntasir
Department of Economics, School of Business and Economics, North South University, Dhaka, 1229, Bangladesh.
Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), E-17 Agargaon, Sher-e- Bangla Nagar, Dhaka, 1207, Bangladesh.
Heliyon. 2024 Oct 9;10(20):e39012. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e39012. eCollection 2024 Oct 30.
Output generation processes across South Asia are deemed unclean (highly emission-intensive) due to excessive reliance on fossil fuels. Thus, decarbonizing the growth processes of countries within this region has critical emphasis among policymakers. However, since the South Asian countries are not yet ready to undergo the renewable energy transition in full form, it is unlikely that their annual carbon discharge levels will subside anytime soon. Under such constraining circumstances, these countries need to limit the rate at which their respective carbon emission levels rise each year. Therefore, the impacts of digitalization on annual carbon emission growth rates in selected South Asian countries are assessed in this study. Overall, considering internet penetration rate as a proxy of digital technology adoption, the results confirm that policies aimed at digitalizing the concerned South Asian economies not only exert emission growth rate-reducing impacts via a direct channel, but also indirectly reduce emission growth rates by making natural resource-based industries more productive, expediting the energy sector greening processes, greening the financial sectors, making corruption controlling measures within institutions more effective, and limiting urbanization-induced environmental quality-worsening effects. Therefore, it is relevant for the South Asian governments to emphasize on digitalization while simultaneously ensuring that green digital technologies are adopted within the major macroeconomic sectors across this region.
由于过度依赖化石燃料，南亚各地的产出生成过程被视为不清洁（高排放密集型）。因此，该地区各国增长过程的脱碳成为政策制定者的关键重点。然而，由于南亚国家尚未准备好全面进行可再生能源转型，其年度碳排放水平近期不太可能下降。在这种受限的情况下，这些国家需要限制各自碳排放水平每年的上升速度。因此，本研究评估了数字化对选定南亚国家年度碳排放增长率的影响。总体而言，以互联网普及率作为数字技术采用的代理指标，结果证实，旨在使相关南亚经济体数字化的政策不仅通过直接渠道产生降低排放增长率的影响，还通过提高自然资源型产业的生产力、加速能源部门绿化进程、绿化金融部门、提高机构内反腐败措施的有效性以及限制城市化导致的环境质量恶化影响，间接降低排放增长率。因此，南亚各国政府在强调数字化的同时，确保该地区主要宏观经济部门采用绿色数字技术是很有必要的。
