Narrow Results

Rapid industrialisation and economic growth among the emerging E-7 economic countries (China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, and Turkey) negatively degrade the environment in the region. Therefore, this study investigates the relationship between financial development and environmental degradation to promote low-carbon transition. The methodology of data collection techniques employed is the generalised method of moments (GMM) using a one-step and two-step approach, and a seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) test is used to obtain the study objectives. The empirical outcomes unveiled that fiscal decentralisation and financial inclusion favourably moderate the impact of total carbon emission (TCE) and carbon emission per capita on energy (CEPE) intensity. Ecological quality degrades by increasing financial development; however, human capital and institutional quality reduce environmental degradation. The causality analysis suggested that any policy related to economic growth, human capital, and institutional quality will affect the environment. Additionally, an institution’s quality reduces the negative ecological impacts caused by financial development. In conclusion, emerging economies should promote environmental sustainability by fostering human capital and effectively using financial resources. Also, economic growth in E-7 countries is responsible for reducing carbon emissions; therefore, E-7 governments should prioritise research into low-carbon technology and renewable energy sources, and the financial sector must play its role to give more capital that prioritises environmentally conscious enterprises and encourages strategies that minimise environmental impact.

The escalating environmental degradation, defined as the deterioration of the natural environment through depletion of resources, pollution, and ecosystem destruction, poses a significant threat to sustainable development, prompting the critical need to explore effective financial mechanisms to address this issue. This investigation enhances the existing literature by analyzing the interplay between green finance, environmental degradation, and specific interaction mechanisms such as economic policy uncertainty, investor protection, and the Paris Agreement providing robust insights into sustainable development strategies for G7 countries. Using data from G7 countries spanning 1998 to 2023, we employ panel fixed effect estimates to analyze the relationship between these variables. Our findings support the supposition that green finance favorably influences environmental degradation, whereas sustainable growth is adversely influencing it. Moreover, our research indicates that the Paris Agreement in 2015, investor protection indices, and low economic policy uncertainty enhance the positive impact of green finance on sustainable development. Our study highlights the importance of integrating green finance into policy frameworks to promote sustainable development and mitigate environmental degradation adverse influence.

This study examines the drivers of environmental degradation in ASEAN + China. It focusses on three unresolved questions: (i) Does the inclusion of China in ASEAN panel aggravate environmental degradation, given that China is a high carbon emissions country? (ii) Does financial development moderate the impact of energy consumption on environmental degradation in ASEAN? (iii) Does urbanization moderate the impact of energy consumption on environmental degradation in ASEAN? It employs empirical strategies that account for heterogeneity, endogeneity and cross-sectional dependence. The results show that economic growth, energy consumption and non-renewable energy aggravate environmental degradation, whereas renewable energy, foreign direct investment and trade openness mitigate it. The inclusion of China in ASEAN panel weakens the EKC hypothesis. Financial development favorably moderates the effect of energy consumption on environmental degradation in ASEAN, but adversely moderates the effect in ASEAN + China. Urbanization adversely moderates the impact of energy consumption on environmental degradation in both panels. Hence, efforts to address environmental degradation should consider these different drivers.

Due to industrialization, increasing solid waste is affecting environmental integrity globally. Reverse logistics (RL) has become a significant tool to deal with environmental degradation issues, and it is being implemented in developed countries. However, RL is at the infancy stage in developing countries especially in Pakistan due to different obstacles. This study aims to identify and analyzes the interrelationship between barriers affecting RL implementation in Pakistani manufacturing industry using an integrated methodology of Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) and MICMAC approach. Results of ISM and MICMAC identified organizational, financial, and technological barriers as dependent barriers. However, lack of government policy incentives, lack of responsiveness about RL, lack of enforceable laws on product return, changing in regulations due to political changes, lack of environmental law awareness and lack of corporate social responsibility emerged out as top-ranked barriers driving other barriers that need to be addressed. An inter-relationship based structural model will be helpful for supply chain and RL professional in understanding major obstacles to RL implementation and develop a strategy to promote RL in the manufacturing industry.

This paper aims to clarify the potential benefits and challenges of integrating environmental assessment (EA) and disaster management considerations, and current research gaps. In this context, the discussion is provided from three perspectives: (1) the consideration of disaster risk in EA; (2) the development of accelerated EA for post-disaster situations; and (3) the integration of EA into pre-disaster response and recovery planning. For this, a Japanese JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)/UK ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) financed UK-Japan project on the integration of environmental assessment (EA) and disaster management was conducted in 2012. It was concluded that whilst EA can be beneficial for disaster management, there are a number of potential pitfalls and an evident lack of research in the area.

The environmental problem has become a worldwide issue that must be frequently examined. Thus, this study investigates the relation of tourism, natural resources, globalization, and foreign direct investment on the ecological footprint of the USA, the UK, Pakistan, China, and India by using annual data from 1995 to 2020. The study applied Zivot and Andrews (1992) test to demonstrate the stationarity properties of the series, and an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach was employed to estimate the long-run and short-run dynamics. The long-run findings disclose that tourism has a significantly positive effect on China and Pakistan, but a significantly negative impact on India. The outcomes further suggest that foreign direct investment increases environmental degradation in India and China in both long and short periods, but contributes to improving the UK’s ecosystem. Besides, globalization in China tends to save its environment. Natural resources in the long run also harm the ecosystems of Pakistan, China, and the USA. The error correction term is negatively significant for all countries. The reliability of the model is investigated through diagnostic tests. The selected model is stable as the critical value of CUSUM and CUSUMSQ lie within the 5% significance level.

Nigeria has become one of the sub-Saharan Africa’s largest remittance recipients. Despite the economic benefits of remittances, there is rising concern about their impact on environmental degradation. The NARDL approach was used to analyze time-series data from 1980 to 2018, to determine the impact of remittances increases and decreases on environmental degradation in Nigeria. The cointegration results show that remittances and environmental degradation have a long-run relationship. The study found that remittances is asymmetrically connected to ecological footprint (EFP) as a measure of environmental degradation both in the long run and short run whereas it is asymmetrically connected with CO₂ as a measure of environmental degradation in the long run only. The study also found that remittances increase contributes to environmental degradation in Nigeria in the long run.

The focus of this chapter is security defined by its widest meaning, i.e., comprehensive security including the environment, development of a society, and peoples’ everyday life, with well-being and freedom of expression of people as well as security and sovereignty of a nation. It begins with definitions of comprehensive security and sustainable development. This will be followed first, by a brief overview on discourses, narratives, scenarios, as well as trends, of the Arctic and Arctic governance; second, by discussing sustainable development vis-à-vis the reality; and third, by counting on a role of different actors in security. Finally, before conclusions, comprehensive security is discussed as a process, and the global Arctic as a case study.

The comprehensive security concept, developed based on the UN reports on interrelations between the environment, development, and security (war/peace), has innovative aspects in its holistic, integrated, and transdisciplinary approach. It includes the perspectives of human beings, societies, and regions, rather than just states, and citizens’ rights to be secured from war and live in peace, which is in conflict with the narrow definition of military security. By having strong societal aspects, it raises the question of who are actors of security. Theoretically, from the point of view of comprehensive security, political subjectivity means that an “actor” of security is consciously active and open towards her/ his own security. This recognized and legitimized right can be seen as an important aspect of, even prerequisite for, sustainable development, as well as civilized democracy. Here, the Actor Network theory is not sufficient enough, as two or more competing actors may have common interests in one or two functional fields of low politics, such as scientific research and environmental protection.

Correspondingly, “Sustainable development”, based on the UN’s report and enhanced by the Sustainable Development Goals, is a powerful concept (though indigenous peoples’ concept of “Resilience” is seen as a credible alternative one). Interestingly, among different concepts, “Sustainable development” is having an almost ethereal quality among Arctic stakeholders, as the Arctic States are committed to sustainable development, combined with environmental protection and climate change.

Climate change, mostly meaning global warming, is enough to reshape the reality of the Arctic region’s residents and societies, as underlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. Therefore, to broaden the traditional interpretation of the traditional military security and its scope is crucial for being able to tackle the rapidly advancing climate change. As comprehensive security is not largely discussed in the 21st century Arctic, there is a need to apply this holistic approach, when developing integrated policies for a sustainable Arctic.

Several discourses, narratives, scenarios, trends, and research projects deal with show to enhance the post-Cold War Arctic’s security and implement sustainable development there. The reality is, however, uncertainties due to grand environmental challenges and huge infrastructure development plans (e.g., China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the recent Build Back Better World Plan by the G7) in the post-COVID-19 era. Furthermore, sustainability is implemented only to a certain extent, as the Arctic States are building on economic activities and hesitating when a balance is sought between environmental protection and climate change mitigation vis-à-vis economic activities, such as megaprojects on offshore drilling. All this makes interrelations between the environment, development, governance, and security more relevant. Here, the globalized Arctic in flux is an interesting ecological, cultural, geopolitical, geo-economical, and scientific context, as well as an excellent case study to examine and analyze the needs of a holistic approach and comprehensive security.

In conclusion, comprehensive security, based on critical security studies and an ultimate nature of security, reflects and responds to non-military security threats and challenges, which are defined as risks to people and human existence. Concerning interrelations between the environment, sustainable development, governance, and security, it is an integrative concept, which brings together fields of life of individuals, and all topical areas of a society, as well as the global community. Implementing comprehensive security in the Arctic is an integration process with certain features and preconditions, and elaborated with stakeholder engagement throughout the process, taking into account the variety of perspectives. As a relatively new concept, comprehensive security can be interpreted to be a part, even as a prerequisite, of sustainable development and its implementation, globally and locally. Correspondingly, an ultimate precondition for the implementation of comprehensive security is that people and civil societies will be recognized as actors of security and that they demand that.

Upland bear many diffferent social properties as compare to lowland. It also plays an important ecological role in conserving and buffering its surrounding area. This area has been threatened by agricultural practices that threat its sustainability⁶. Indeed, environmentally unfriendly agriculture has resulted an environmental degradation. Such degradation is related with five types of capital of the rural/livelihood assets³. Framework of capacity-environmental degradation was used to asses this linkage⁸. Data is collected by questionnaire. Multiple-linear regression was the tool of analyses used. The multiple-linear regression model does a good job in explaining the linkage between rural assets and agricultural-environmental degradation. Human capital and financial capital are the dominant factors that affect farmer's decision and, agricultural-environmental degradation respectively.

From the beginning of the reform and open door policy period, in 1978, to the present moment, China has consistently subordinated the importance of environmental protection to the pursuit of rapid economic growth in the name of constructing a socialist modernized state. Remarkable achievements in economic development have been made in the last three decades, and people's living standards, in material terms, have been vastly improved, but China has paid a very heavy price, in environmental terms, for such gains. Confronted with a widening spectrum of problems manifesting rapid environmental deterioration, major initiatives and measures have been repeatedly undertaken by the Central government to improve the efficacy of the country's environment protection apparatus. This chapter reviews the challenges encountered, and progress made, in the field of environmental protection, tracing the impacts of rapid industrial and urban growth on the country's environmental contours and ecological landscape. We argue that, despite of the pro-environment actions undertaken by the Central government, the prospect for a quick reversal of the current trends of environmental degradation remains slim because such efforts have always been resisted or even negated by local governments bent on pursuing economic growth at the cost of environmental protection. Unless China's political culture is reformed to allow a greater degree of transparency in local governance matters and that the implementation of environmental policies and programs is effectively and vastly strengthened, the country will be hard pressed to achieve even its modest environmental targets in the foreseeable future.