The impact of environmental regulation on foreign firms’ exit: from the perspective of competition

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Most of the existing studies on the pollution haven hypothesis focus on the foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow, ignoring the divestment of FDI and...     

Heterogeneous impacts of financial development on carbon emissions: evidence from China’s provincial data

The effect of financial development on carbon emissions is a hot topic. Although some researches study the heterogeneous impacts of financial development on carbon emissions at the country level, few paper has investigated their heterogeneous relations within the same country. This paper, applying geographically and temporally weighted regression (GTWR), studies the spatial–temporal heterogeneity of the impacts of financial development on carbon emissions across China’s 30 provinces from 2003 to 2017. The results show that financial development proxied by bank credit indicators curbs carbon emissions in most provinces most of the time, while that proxied by stock market indicator exhibits nonlinear relationships in most provinces, such as U-shaped, inverse U-shaped, and inverse N-shaped. The paper concludes first that financial development proxied by different indicators may exert varied impacts on carbon emissions. Second, the impact of financial development on carbon emissions shows great heterogeneity among different provinces and different years: it may be curbing or increasing, and even it is curbing, its curbing effects differ greatly across provinces and years. Third, the impact of financial development on CO2 is not always monotonic; instead, it may be nonlinear. Regional segmentation of financial markets may explain the heterogeneity. Some policy suggestions are also given.

     

Does foreign direct investment asymmetrically influence carbon emissions in sub-Saharan Africa? Evidence from nonlinear panel ARDL approach

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - In recent decades, the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and carbon emissions has garnered the extensive attention by researchers...     

Does foreign private investment affect the clean industrial environment? Nexus among foreign private investment,CO2 emissions,energy consumption,trade openness,and sustainable economic growth

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - This study examines to what extent foreign private investment (FPI) affects the clean industrial environment and sustainable economic growth through...     

Digitalization and environment: how does ICT affect enterprise environmental performance?

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Despite the increasing use of digital technology in industrial production, how industrial digitalization affects the environmental performance of...     

Assessment on the effectiveness of environmental regulation in China—evidence from a panel data analysis

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - In the context of global warming and environmental deterioration, the environment impact assessment is a crucial institutional guaranty to assure less...     

How does green credit policy affect total factor productivity of the manufacturing firms in China? The mediating role of debt financing and the moderating role of environmental regulation

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Treating the green credit policy issued in 2012 as a quasi-natural experiment, this study has investigated the impact of green credit policy on total...     

Would environmental pollution affect home prices? An empirical study based on China’s key cities

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - With the development of China’s economy, the problem of environmental pollution has become increasingly more serious, affecting the sustained...     

How geographic diversification affects corporate social responsibility? The moderating effects of ownership and environmental regulation

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - As a popular strategy for firms to spread risk and reduce cost, geographic diversification might lead to more pressure from multidimensional...     

Nexus among electricity consumption,foreign direct investment and aggregate economic activity towards Nigeria’s economic performance: evidence from a trivariate causality model

It is evident that there is nexus among electricity consumption, foreign direct investment and aggregate economic activity. Unfortunately, the causal relationship among the three variables in Nigeria based on modern econometric methods, recent time-series data and ways that sufficiently cater for inflation and population growth has not been adequately investigated. This study, among other things, used a trivariate vector error correction model, autoregressive distributed lag bounds test for cointegration and Granger causality test to analyse the causal relationship among electricity consumption, foreign direct investment and aggregate economic activity based on time-series data from 1970 to 2018. The study found the presence of neutral causality between electricity consumption and aggregate economic activity in the short run as well as unidirectional causality from aggregate economic activity to electricity consumption in the long run. The study also found the presence of unidirectional causality from foreign direct investment to electricity consumption as well as neutral causality between foreign direct investment and aggregate economic activity in both the short run and the long run. It is therefore recommended that steps should be taken to adequately increase foreign direct investment and aggregate economic activity in ways that will guarantee an optimal increase in electricity consumption in Nigeria.

     

Environmental pollution of China to foreign investors: detrimental or beneficial?

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - This study investigates the dynamic linkage among foreign direct investment, energy consumption, and environmental pollution of China spanning from...     

The role of private investment in ICT on carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) mitigation: do renewable energy and political risk matter in Morocco?

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The present study proposed the relationship among private investment in information and communication technology (ICT), carbon emissions (CO2),...     

Do antibiotics have environmental side-effects? Impact of synthetic antibiotics on biogeochemical processes

Antibiotic use in the early 1900 vastly improved human health but at the same time started an arms race of antibiotic resistance. The widespread use of antibiotics has resulted in ubiquitous trace concentrations of many antibiotics in most environments. Little is known about the impact of these antibiotics on microbial processes or “non-target” organisms. This mini-review summarizes our knowledge of the effect of synthetically produced antibiotics on microorganisms involved in biogeochemical cycling. We found only 31 articles that dealt with the effects of antibiotics on such processes in soil, sediment, or freshwater. We compare the processes, antibiotics, concentration range, source, environment, and experimental approach of these studies. Examining the effects of antibiotics on biogeochemical processes should involve environmentally relevant concentrations (instead of therapeutic), chronic exposure (versus acute), and monitoring of the administered antibiotics. Furthermore, the lack of standardized tests hinders generalizations regarding the effects of antibiotics on biogeochemical processes. We investigated the effects of antibiotics on biogeochemical N cycling, specifically nitrification, denitrification, and anammox. We found that environmentally relevant concentrations of fluoroquinolones and sulfonamides could partially inhibit denitrification. So far, the only documented effects of antibiotic inhibitions were at therapeutic doses on anammox activities. The most studied and inhibited was nitrification (25–100 %) mainly at therapeutic doses and rarely environmentally relevant. We recommend that firm conclusions regarding inhibition of antibiotics at environmentally relevant concentrations remain difficult due to the lack of studies testing low concentrations at chronic exposure. There is thus a need to test the effects of these environmental concentrations on biogeochemical processes to further establish the possible effects on ecosystem functioning.     

Impacts of globalization and energy consumption on environmental degradation: what is the way forward to achieving environmental sustainability targets in Nigeria?

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - One of the major problems the world is currently facing is climate change. This is due to the use of fossil fuel combustion, which increases the...     

What do we really know about the impacts of one of the 100 worst invaders in Europe? A reality check

Invasive species are one of the greatest threats to biodiversity worldwide, and to successfully manage their introductions is a major challenge for society. Knowledge on the impacts of an invasive species is essential for motivating decision makers and optimally allocating management resources. We use a prominent invasive fish species, the round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) to objectively quantify the state of scientific knowledge on its impacts. Focusing on how native fish species are affected by round goby invasions, we analyzed 113 peer-reviewed papers and found that impacts are highly ecosystem and time scale dependent. We discovered round goby impacts to be profound, but surprisingly complex. Even if identical native species were affected, the impacts remained less comparable across ecosystems than expected. Acknowledging the breadth but also limitations in scientific knowledge on round goby impacts would greatly improve scientists’ ability to conduct further research and inform management measures.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13280-015-0718-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Do foreign direct investments influence environmental degradation? Evidence from a panel autoregressive distributed lag model approach to low-, lower-middle-, upper-middle-, and high-income countries

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The main aim of the present study is to examine the possible nonlinear relations between foreign direct investments and environmental deterioration...     

How do long-term development and periodical changes of river-floodplain systems affect the fate of contaminants? Results from European rivers

In many densely populated areas, riverine floodplains have been strongly impacted and degraded by river channelization and flood protection dikes. Floodplains act as buffers for flood water and as filters for nutrients and pollutants carried with river water and sediment from upstream source areas. Based on results of the EU-funded “AquaTerra” project (2004-2009), we analyze changes in the dynamics of European river-floodplain systems over different temporal scales and assess their effects on contaminant behaviour and ecosystem functioning. We find that human-induced changes in the hydrologic regime of rivers have direct and severe consequences on nutrient cycling and contaminant retention in adjacent floodplains. We point out the complex interactions of contaminants with nutrient availability and other physico-chemical characteristics (pH, organic matter) in determining ecotoxicity and habitat quality, and draw conclusions for improved floodplain management.     

The effect of fiscal decentralization,environmental regulation,and economic development on haze pollution: empirical evidence for 270 Chinese cities during 2007–2016

The current discourse addresses fiscal issues, financial decentralization, and environmental quality and significantly affects economic development and sustainability. This investigation aims to address the research gap in fiscal decentralization and haze pollution for innovation and sustainable growth. This study uses the annual data of 270 Chinese cities from 2007 to 2016 for comprehensive analysis and employs spatial regression methods. The key findings imply that haze pollution in neighbouring cities causes further ecological issues. While the environmental regulations of China tend to have negative impacts on pollution, fiscal decentralization was found to be a key contributor to environmental pollution in Chinese cities. Overall, the study supports the validity of the pollution refuge hypothesis in China. Lastly, the conclusions allow us to conclude that China might need micro-level reforms regarding fiscal decentralization, environmental tax laws, and encouragement of cleaner production technologies.

     

Determinants of household fuel choices among Nigerian family heads: are there gender-differentiated impacts?

The consensus in the literature holds that female-headed households (FHHs) are more vulnerable to social and economic exclusion than male-headed households (MHHs). This paper investigates the socioeconomic determinants of household cooking fuel choices across MHHs and FHHs, using the rich Nigerian Demographic Health Survey data. Using the exogenous switching treatment effect regression (ESTER) technique, the study is able to unravel differences in socioeconomic effects of gender inequality on cooking fuel choices in Nigeria. The results validate the energy ladder hypothesis in the Nigerian case and show that the choices of dirty fuel (biomass) is more prevalent among the de-jure FHH when compared with the de-facto FHH and MHHs. Also, the probability of biomass-use among MHHs would have fallen by 1.3% if MHHs had similar socioeconomic attributes as the FHHs. In the same vain for FHHs, the probability of kerosene-use would have increased by 2%. The study observed no gender gap in kerosene-use. Thus, the established gender gap in biomass- and kerosene-use would have reduced to 6.7% and 2.8%, respectively, if the de-facto FHHs had same socioeconomic attributes as the de-jures. Considering the traditional gendered household division of labor within the households, de-jure FHHs’ energy choices may be due to limited economic opportunities that guarantees cleaner energy options.

     

How does drought affect native grasses’ photosynthesis on the revegetation of iron ore tailings?

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - The revegetation of areas degraded by iron ore mining is a difficult challenge mainly due to water availability and impoverished metal-rich...