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Achieving reliable energy supply and environment sustainability whereby mitigating CO2 emissions and promoting sustainable development has become a global effort. Thus, the current study intends to verify the non-linear influence effects of natural gas, nuclear energy, renewable energy and information and communication technology trade on economic growth and carbon dioxide emission in ten leading CO2 emitter countries from 20002016. The panel regression, such as pooled regression, model fixed effect, random effects, robust least squares and panel causation procedures are applied for panel data appraisal. The regression analysis results mention that nuclear energy, renewable energy, and Information and communication technology (ICT-trade) stimulate economic growth, whereas environmental results illustrate that renewable energy and ICT-trade contribute to eliminating CO2 emissions. The causality findings indicate that renewable energy consumption and ICT trade cause economic growth as well as CO2 emissions. Therefore, policymakers should invigorate to exploit renewable energy and achieve the benefits from the significant influence of economic growth and a clean environment through the potential of green ICT-trade.

Sustaining crop production and productivity in sub-Saharan Africa requires the availability and use of quality seed of improved varieties by smallholder farmers. The private sector has been considered as the best way to sustain seed supply and crop productivity. Unfortunately, the private sector’s share in the seed production and delivery in sub-Saharan Africa countries has not been very substantial for decades. As a consequence, farmer access to quality seed of recently released varieties remains very low. This manuscript analyzes the experiences of informal seed producers who graduated to formal private seed enterprises to understand the effectiveness of the support they receive to become viable seed ventures. We used comparative research methods to analyze the qualitative and quantitative data collected to understand the underlying mechanisms. The findings showed that the analyzed seed enterprises started with as little as about USD 300 and have already multiplied over tenfold their initial capital. They benefited from a wide variety of supports, e.g., quality seed production, marketing, partnerships, and value chain development trainings and infrastructures, from extension workers, research centers, national and international NGOs, and the other private seed enterprise operators like large public seed enterprises and agro-dealers. The seed enterprises are producing pre-basic, basic, and certified seed of cereals and self-pollinated legume crops delivered directly to farmers, institutional markets, and agro-dealers. The seed production data have been increasing for the past three years with an area expanding from about 30 ha to over 150 ha per year for chickpea. The seed production and delivery practices being employed are smallholder farmer-based practices that are environmentally friendly. For sustainable and reliable seed production and delivery systems in sub-Saharan Africa, a bold step is needed whereby the informal seed production entities are nurtured and upgraded into formal certified seed production ventures that deliver social and economic benefits to the promotors and the communities.

This study aims to measure the relationship between technological progress, renewable energy, and green economic growth (GEG). This study uses a data envelopment analysis (DEA) estimation method to evaluate the association between government expenditure on research and development (R&D), renewable energy deployment, and GEG in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) between 1990 and 2018. The estimates revealed an inconsistent GEG indicator in the analysis, suggesting the lesser impact disposition of public policy. In addition, the energy efficiency ratio of ECOWAS subregion is under 0.50, implying energy poverty in the sub-region. Many people do not have sufficient energy to heat and cool their homes to enough temperature and meet their basic needs and energy security concerns. This research discovered that a percentage growth increase in renewable energy deployment results in a 3.2% increase in growth in sustainable performance. Alongside an essential effect of one percentage point growth in R&D expenditure boosts economic system sustainable performance to 4.4% combined with a supported effect of one percent. This research reveals that the ECOWAS government expenditure on human resources and R&D of sustainable energy resources would result in a low carbon growth via an advanced technological production process; nevertheless, the impacts are varied in the various countries in ECOWAS. (c) 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Following the debate on the implications of international trade for global climate policy, this paper introduces the topic of the economic benefits from trade obtained by exporting countries in relation to the emissions generated in the production of exports. In 2008, 24% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and 20% of the employment around the world were linked to international trade. China “exported” 30% of emissions and hosted 37.5% of the jobs generated by trade worldwide. The European Union and the United States of America were the destination of 25% and 18.4% of the GHG emissions embodied in trade. The imports of these two regions contributed to the creation of 45% of the employment generated by international trade. This paper proposes the idea of including trade issues in international climate negotiations, taking into account not only the environmental burden generated by developed countries when displacing emissions to developing countries through their imports, but also the economic benefits of developing countries producing the goods exported to developed countries.

Environmental deregulation has become a severe concern for public health around the world. Increased pollution and ecological degradation have diverted attention towards adopting green practices, which can be possible if the sustainable green finance system is implemented in its true spirit. But previous studies reported certain factors affecting its implementation process, particularly in developing countries. This study aims to identify and quantify the barriers to adopting a green finance system. First, it identified twenty barriers through an extensive literature review and semi-structured interviews with experts in the fields of financial management, economics, and environmental sciences. Later, eighteen factors were finalized by the consensus of panel experts, which was further used to analyze their interrelationship through Interpretive Structural Modelling (ISM). Using MICMAC analysis, these barriers were categorized based on their diving-dependence powers. Finally, the conceptual ISM model is developed that provides a clear picture of the impediments to the green finance adoption system and their flow relationship among the identified barriers at different levels. The findings suggest that global level factors: lack of pressure from international organizations and unavailability of globally acceptable green criteria are critical to the prevalence of other factors that indicate its centrality to effectively implementing the green finance system. The developed model helps in designing, implementing, and promoting eco-friendly projects. It is also recommended that an appropriate framework is required to be developed at global, country, organizational, and individual levels to deal with the barriers of the green finance adoption system. Doi: 10.28991/ESJ-2022-06-02-02 Full Text: PDF

Africa is blessed with abundant energy sources that can promote economic growth and provide sufficient capacity to meet up with the future electricity demand. This paper evaluates the progress made in renewable energy (RE) development in Nigeria and Cameroon together with the roadmaps for future implementation. Since the early 2000, Nigeria has identified RE as an additional source to improve electrical power generation, while Cameroon is yet to have a defined policy for RE development. Presently, in both countries, RE is being developed for empowering the local economies, but the RE incorporation to the national grid is yet to be implemented at a greater scale. Since Nigeria and Cameroon have similar climatic conditions, they can benefit from each other through greater cooperation in the RE sector. For the two countries, there is high solar irradiation and excellent wind speed that can be effectively utilized for electricity generation. For all these to benefit both nations, there is a greater need for good leadership and good governance.

This study assesses environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis corroborating the role of scale, composite, and technology effects in OECD countries. To this end, we analyze the panel time series data from 1980 to 2017 using cross-sectional-autoregressive distributed lags (CS-ARDL). We document that economic growth and carbon emissions follow a U-shaped relationship, contrary to the EKC hypothesis, which our analysis attributes to the substantial contributions of the industrial, manufacturing, and service sectors to GDP. Technological progress has a somewhat marginal impact in reducing carbon emissions through energy efficiency but is unable to validate the existence of EKC hypothesis.