Search

Until recently, many countries’ policies were motivated by economic growth; however, few strategies were developed to prevent environmental deterioration including reducing the ecological footprint. In this context, the purpose of this study was to analyze the role of natural resource rents, technological innovation, and financial development on the ecological footprint in 90 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) economies. This research divided the BRI economies into high income, middle-income, and low-income levels to capture income differences. This research used the second-generation panel unit root, cointegration, and augmented mean group estimators to calculate the robust and reliable outcomes. Based on the annual data from 1991 to 2018, the findings show that natural resource rents drastically damage the quality of the environment, whereas technological innovations are helpful in reducing ecological footprint. Moreover, the outcome of the interaction term (natural resource rents and technological innovations) negatively impacts the ecological footprint. Interestingly, these findings were similar in the three income groups. In addition, financial development improved environmental quality in the middle-income BRI economies, but reduced it in high-income, low-income, and full sample countries. Furthermore, the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) concept has been validated across all BRI economies. Policymakers in BRI countries should move resources away from resource-rich sectors of industries/manufacturing sectors to enhance/promote economic growth and use these NRRs efficiently for a progressive, sustainable environment. Based on these findings, several efficient policy suggestions are proposed.

Since China’s central authority began enforcing the environmental target responsibility system and introduced environmental indicators to the official ranking tournament in 2007, an ecological transformation has emerged in the intergovernmental competition (IGC) among localities. Because the extant literature on the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) remains unclear regarding how that ecological IGC transformation changes the EKC economy–pollution correlation, this research investigates the degree to which the transformed IGC changes the form of the EKC, and how that altered EKC varies for different pollutants (i.e., SO2 and CO2) and in different regions (i.e., the eastern, central, and western regions). The results demonstrate a consistently inverted U-shaped relationship between income and SO2 emissions in all three regions, whereas when CO2 emissions are taken as the pollution indicator, the EKC hypothesis holds only in the eastern and central cities, and a positive linear income–CO2 nexus is found in the western region. Spatial analysis reveals that whereas the IGC flattens the inverted U-shaped curves between income and SO2 emissions, it has led to a higher economic cost, corresponding to the turning point of the EKC for CO2 emissions. The findings indicate that the ecological transformation of the IGC has facilitated a positive up–down yardstick competition in the strategic interactions of sustainable development across local Chinese governments, which can lead to a kind of balance between centralization and decentralization by inspiring local officials’ adaptability and activity in reducing pollutant emissions and strengthening the officials’ responsiveness to performance rankings. This study elucidates the environmental impacts of IGC in China and provides an institutional explanation for the strategic interactions among local governments when they are tackling the environment–economy nexus under multitask conditions.

This paper examines the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) relationship between energy consumption and economic growth in upper-middle-income regions of China with the panel data of 21 provinces from 2000 to 2017. The influence mechanism of socio-economic factors on the EKC of these regions is also detected. The results show that the energy consumption EKC fitting map in these regions conforms to the classical environmental Kuznets curve, which is an inverted &ldquo, N&rdquo, type, and the inflection point is ahead and more accurate after adding spatial effects. The direct effect of energy consumption has delayed the inflection point, indicating that the level of industrialization, urbanization, and population density have a significant impact on EKC. At the same time, it is found that the level of industrialization and population density have a positive relationship with energy consumption, while the level of urbanization has a negative correlation with energy consumption. The spatial spillover effect of the indirect effects of total energy consumption, coal consumption, and crude oil consumption shows that the level of industrialization has a significant and negative link with EKC. The increase in the level of industrialization will affect the total energy consumption of neighboring areas and the consumption of coal and crude oil.