Governance has become indispensable within the healthcare sector, but previous studies have not explored the potential environmental benefits linked to healthcare governance. Thus, this study focuses on the role of governance in moderating healthcare and environmental emissions in 159 low, lower-middle, upper-middle and high-income countries. To do so, cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) techniques were applied using panel data from 1999 to 2021, followed by the computation of threshold and marginal effect of governance on healthcare and environmental emissions nexus. Findings revealed that, with the exception of high-income countries in the short run, governance has an insignificant impact on healthcare and emissions nexus in low-, lower-middle and upper-middle-income countries. Surprisingly, the findings imply that, in the long run, countries with greater levels of governance are likely to have lesser environmental impacts related to healthcare. There was also evidence indicating that low, lower-middle, upper-middle and high-income countries must reach a certain level of governance before realising the benefits of healthcare. Therefore, to achieve lower environmental impacts from healthcare, countries must promote effective governance policies that can incentivise and enforce sustainable practices and technologies in the healthcare sector.
This study examines the impact of food security on health outcomes in 56 developing countries from 2011 to 2019, using a comprehensive measure of food security. Applying generalized methods of moments, the results provide supportive evidence that food security influences health in a positive way. The existence of positive effects suggests that food availability (i.e., more supply), accessibility (i.e., higher income), utilization (i.e., healthy foods), and stability (i.e., more certainty in production) for livelihoods sustain life and promote good health. As a result, this study justifies the need for governments to provide equal support to all four dimensions of food security to promote better nutrition and health.
This study investigates the energy security and income roles in testing environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for developing countries from 1990 to 2019. The panel quantile regression approaches are employed to examine the relationship between the variables, considering that income and energy security effects on carbon emissions may vary across distributions. Findings revealed that the EKC hypothesis was inconsistent at low and high quantiles when estimating energy availability, affordability, and acceptability. The validity of inverted U-shaped EKC is supported at high quantiles for energy affordability and accessibility in developing countries. However, given the energy accessibility and acceptability, the EKC hypothesis becomes invalid in developing countries. Notably, developing countries have yet to progress toward achieving energy security as a switch component to low carbon emissions. This study contributes to the literature by revealing the effect of availability, accessibility, affordability, and acceptability of energy security on carbon dioxide emissions (CO2). Thus, it suggests implications for improving environmental quality in developing countries by enhancing energy security. Diversifying energy sources with nuclear, renewable, and developing technologies reduces dependence risks on a single source while improving efficiency through technology and demand management lowers carbon emissions and strengthens energy security. Beyond energy security, this study emphasises sustainable urban planning to promote compact development, effective transportation, and green infrastructure to reduce energy use and improve environmental sustainability, ultimately reducing carbon emissions.
Understanding the nexus CO2 emissions and economic growth helps economies in formulating energy policies and developing energy resources in sustainable ways. Although during recent years, numerous of the previous studies have been very thoroughly investigated the nexus between economic growth and CO2 emissions, there is a lack of research regarding the qualitative systematic review and meta-analysis in these areas. The main purpose of this review paper is to present the comprehensive overview of the relationship between CO2 emissions and economic growth. In this regard, the Web of Science database has been chosen and a qualitative systematic and meta-analysis method which called "Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA)" has been proposed. Therefore, a review of 175 published articles appearing in 55 scholarly international journals between 1995 and 2017 has been achieved to reach a broad review of the nexus between economic growth and CO2 emissions with other indicators. Consequently, the selected articles have been categorized by the author name, the year of publication, data duration, types of techniques, data analysis method, the name of indicators, country, scope (individual country and multi-countries), journals, results, and outcome in which they appeared. The results of this paper demonstrated that the nexus between CO2 emissions and economic growth gives reasons for policy options that have to reduce emissions by imposing limiting factors on economic growth as well. Given the fact that bidirectional causality exists, as far as economic growth increases or decreases, further CO2 emissions are stimulated in higher or lower levels and consequently, a potential reduction of the emissions should have an adverse influence on economic growth.
This study attempts to investigate the environment cleanness between the total factor productivity, natural resources and green taxation on Malaysia's clean environment. Using the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis, this study employs the bootstrap quantile estimates based on the annual data series covering the period of 1970-2018 to analyse the quantile effect factors affecting environment cleanness in Malaysia. The empirical estimates of this study reject the EKC hypothesis throughout the quantile levels, while the green taxation shows a negative sign which indicated government fiscal policies are reducing carbon emission in the upper quantiles. There is also homogeneity slope equality effect between total factor of productivity and green taxation on carbon emissions in the middle and upper quantile levels, while natural resources are indication heterogeneity effect on all quantile levels. From the policy point of view, if Malaysia wants to get environment cleanness, there is a need for comprehensive policies of total factor of productivity with environment innovation-friendly and technological improvement in all major economic sectors of the country.