• Energy Research

The impact of human activities on environmental degradation has been increasing over time, and ecological footprint measures the impact of human activities on the environment. An increase in ecological footprint has created alarming situations around the globe. This study explores the causes of Pakistan’s high ecological footprint (EFP). The asymmetric analysis of fossil fuels and renewable energy consumption on EFP has been carried out from 1990 to 2020. The results obtained from the NARDL approach revealed that the positive shocks of fossil fuel consumption increase EFP, but its negative shocks decline EFP. Meanwhile, both positive and negative shocks of renewable energy consumption decline EFP in Pakistan. This study suggests that renewable energy consumption can play a significant role in reducing the EFP in Pakistan.

The continuously increasing GHG emissions have created environmental pollution and several challenges to ecosystems and biodiversity. The challenges of climate change are multipronged, resulting in melting glaciers, flash floods, and severe heat waves. In this regard, the adaptive and mitigation strategies to manage the consequences of climate change are highly important. The transport sector creates a quarter of carbon emissions, and this share is continuously increasing. Accordingly, this research study uses transport competitiveness to determine carbon emissions of the transport sector for 121 countries covering the time period from 2008 to 2018. The Panel Quantile Regression (PQR) technique is engaged to analyze the study results. The findings highlight that transport competitiveness tends to increase carbon emissions of the transport sector across quantile groups 1 and 3, while it reduces carbon emissions in quantile group 2. The U-shaped services’ EKC is validated in quantile groups 2 and 4. The moderation engaged, i.e., transportation competitiveness, changes the turning point of the services’ EKC across quantile groups 2 and 4. However, in the high-CO2 quantile group, the moderation impact of transport competitiveness is strongest as it reduces the sensitivity by flattening the services’ EKC. Furthermore, the planned expansion of the population and improved institutional quality tend to mitigate carbon emissions across different quantile groups. The policy relevance/implications that are based on the study results/findings are made part of the research paper.

It is a global challenge to achieve sustainable economic growth by improving the environment. The present study discussed the role of the financial development sector in achieving sustainable economic growth and environmental quality in South Asian countries from 1990 to 2020 by controlling labour force participation, globalization, industrialization, and the education sector. A feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) panel data econometric technique has been used to check the relationship among the variables. The results show that financial development has a U-shaped relationship with carbon emissions and economic growth. Furthermore, labour force participation, industrialization, globalization, and educational school enrolment significantly increase CO2 and economic growth. This study suggests that the governments of South Asian countries should take steps to increase economic growth. For this purpose, effective supervisory mechanisms of financial development through financial innovation, improving financial efficiency, maintaining financial stability, and reducing the environmental pollution.

Conserving the lives of newborns has been a long-standing issue around the world, where 2.4 million babies die in the first month of the life. The literature indicates that the important challenges of social development goals around the globe include affordable and easy access to electricity, promotion of sustainable economic development, and provision of better social services and creation of job opportunities which help in reducing infant mortality rate. This calls for the need to probe into this matter minutely and brings up the ways for reducing the infant mortality rate. The present study is an attempt to analyze the impact of rural and urban electrification and biomass energy consumption on infant mortality rate for the period 1990-2020 using the Panel Quantile Regression (PQR) approach. The results of the study show that in both developed and developing countries, biomass energy consumption has positive impact on infant mortality rate, while rural and urban electrification has proposed the inverted U-shaped relationship with infant mortality in different quantile groups. It is also concluded that few developing countries are failed to achieve the maturity of the inverted U-shaped curve while all developed countries have achieved at the maturity stage. This study recommended that for reducing the infant mortality rate, the world should discourage the use of biomass energy and promote the affordable and easy access to electricity on priority basis.

This study examines the relationship between globalization, ecological footprint, innovation, and subjective wellbeing in the form of happiness, using a comprehensive assessment of OECD countries from 2008 to 2020. The study employs FGLS, Quantile, and Bootstrap Quantile regression estimation to investigate the quadratic effects of globalization, ecological footprint, and the moderating effect of innovation while controlling for renewable energy and population density. Happiness is a multidisciplinary subject, and this study focuses on the economic dimensions of happiness. The findings reveal a nonlinear relationship between ecological footprint and globalization, with negative effects on subjective wellbeing at high levels of ecological footprint and globalization. However, the moderating effect of innovation mitigates these adverse effects, indicating that innovation can help to offset the detrimental impacts of ecological footprint and globalization on subjective wellbeing. The study’s implications are significant for policymakers promoting sustainable economic growth while enhancing subjective wellbeing. The findings highlight the importance of investing in innovation and sustainable development to promote subjective wellbeing in the face of increasing ecological footprint and globalization. Additionally, this research contributes to the multidisciplinary understanding of happiness and provides valuable insights for future research in this area.