Search

More educated people typically care more about the environment and are more willing to support environmental policy than people with less formal education. However, the relationship between education and environmental outcomes at the population level has been less studied. Using international data and panel regression techniques, this paper shows that increases in national investment in education and access to education increase fossil fuel usage and greater access to education increases carbon dioxide emissions per person. This finding is net of the effects of economic development, democratic institutions, and export intensity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The increasing demand for water and electricity in the Middle East causes environmental stress. Along with the industrial sector, desalination and power plants are linked to fossil fuel combustion, which is chiefly responsible for increased carbon dioxide emissions. The magnitude of certain sustainable development indicators (such as the ecological footprint) has led to growing concern. This paper presents some of the challenges facing the transition to sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa continues to suffer from the effects of climate change in many ways. Records show that the continent's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have seen tremendous upward adjustments over the past decades. While international tourism and renewable energy have been touted as sources of reducing CO2 emissions, the empirical evidence has been mixed, and it is also unclear how exchange rates moderate the effect of tourism on CO2 emissions. With the recent pace of tourism and renewable energy development, as well as exchange rate fluctuations in Africa, the study assesses the impact of international tourism, exchange rate, and renewable energy on CO2 emissions of seven most visited countries in Africa. Carbon dioxide emission was modelled within the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. Regression analyses were performed using the quantile regression and fully modified OLS. Regression analysis from the fully modified OLS method shows that the EKC hypothesis holds for the selected countries; renewable energy and international tourism reduce carbon dioxide emissions; and exchange rate interacts with international tourism to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The quantile regression shows variations in the impacts across the various quantiles. Countries in this study can rely on economic expansion, international tourism, and renewable energy to curb carbon dioxide emissions. It is recommended, among other things, that there should be the development of additional tourism locations and renewable energy adoption be scaled up as a means of reducing heavy polluting energy sources to reduce emissions emanating from the energy sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has shown that democracies exhibit stronger commitments to mitigate climate change and, generally, emit less carbon dioxide than non-democratic regimes. However, there remains much unexplained variation in how democratic regimes perform in this regard. Here it is argued that the benefits of democracy for climate change mitigation are limited in the presence of widespread corruption that reduces the capacity of democratic governments to reach climate targets and reduce CO2 emissions. Using a sample of 144 countries over 1970-2011, the previously established relationship between the amount of countries’ CO2 emissions and their level of democracy is revisited. It is empirically tested whether this relationship is instead moderated by the levels of corruption. The results indicate that more democracy is only associated with lower CO2 emissions in low-corruption contexts. If corruption is high, democracies do not seem to do better than authoritarian regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the pressing global challenges of climate change, initiatives under the auspices of ‘reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation’ (REDD) have been implemented in over 30 developing and least-developed countries since 2005. The initiatives cover nearly every significant and vulnerable forest ecosystem worldwide. In this study we review six representative initiatives, two each from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Strength, weakness, opportunity and threat analysis is done to evaluate each initiative's policy framework, design, implementation and results thus far. The main policy and project implementation factors that appear to lead to effective and successful REDD project outcomes include having clearly formulated project design; governance, land tenure rights and capacity; equity and transparency; indigenous peoples' rights and knowledge; local–international coordination; and enhancing local and institutional capacities. Based on these findings, we provide recommendations for future REDD policy action and project implementation to make it work for the poor and achieve its intended goals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I derive three lessons about the potential to reduce CO2 emissions in the United States by analyzing data on CO2 emissions and energy use from 1960 to 2003. First, improvements in the energy efficiency of the economy and reductions in the CO2 intensity of the energy supply did not lead to a decline in CO2 emissions but rather were associated with rising CO2 emissions. Second, the decline in the CO2 intensity of the energy supply was primarily due to the expansion of nuclear power, which is not environmentally benign. There is no free lunch with regard to non- and low-carbon energy sources, since all energy sources generate some environmental impacts. Furthermore, expanding the use of non-fossil-fuel energy sources does not necessarily suppress the use of fossil-fuel energy sources. Third, population growth has been a key factor driving the expansion of national CO2 emissions and energy use, particularly since per capita levels stabilized after the 1970s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]