The relationship between environmental sustainability and natural resources accounts for environmental regulatory quality in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sustainable environmental quality is in an unstable condition as after COVID-19 the economic effects have transformed global public and policy dialogues that leads to high levels of uncertainties that are macroeconomic. 

An event that ensured that environmental quality was implemented through the mitigation of greenhouse gases in policies and for the global warming levels to remain below 1.5 degrees is COP27. Another framework that helps achieve the development goals is the Sustainable Development Goals. Moreover, economic development has caused an increase in pollutants, which makes it challenging to achieve environmental sustainability. The supported facts from the article mentions, “For example, Global CO2 and Total Greenhouse Gas Emissions 2020 Report2 documents that global GHG emissions in 2019 reached 57.4 GtCO2 eq, with CO2 emissions accounting for 73%, while the remaining 27% was attributed to methane (19%), fluorinated gases (3%), and nitrous oxide (5%). Undoubtedly, the GHG emissions have health implications and, therefore, are alarming.” Additionally, “Watts et al. (2019) states that 20% and 26% of global health challenges emanate from primary minerals extraction and carbon emissions, respectively”. In summary, in having high effects of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere it has adverse effects, which includes poverty in the Sub-Saharan African region. 

Agricultural production is being affected by climate change mostly greenhouse gases negatively, leading to low incomes in Sub-Saharan Africa, as most people rely on farming as a source of income. Further, the article by Doudu and two others mention, “The hazardous effect of a poor environment on humans and ecology has called for the implementation of international instruments to manage pollution, including land, water, and air pollution. Despite the numerous agreements, there has been no real success in reducing global pollution (CO2 emissions). Therefore, it is always urgent to investigate the possible causes of pollution to protect the sustainability of the environment.” Low environmental quality has been explained in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa has a growth of resources such as diamonds, bauxite, crude oil, arable land, and oil. However, the growing population in SSA, coupled with the guarantee of sustainable development and industrialization, has intensified the need to extract more natural resources to accommodate present demands. This is because natural resources account for the region’s key export commodities. Most SSA economies depend on the earnings from these resources for development projects such as roads, schools, health centres, and others. Despite the benefits derived from natural resources, their untenable exploitation degrades the quality of the environment and, therefore, threatens its sustainability”.

In the research there has been a question that has been proposed, “whether the SSA economies should continue to depend on their abundant resources for survival (growth and development) at the expense of environmental sustainability. Given this concern, this study explores the empirical connection between natural resources and environmental sustainability (or quality) in SSA while considering the complementary role of environmental regulatory quality.” 

Regarding environmental stability there are various measures in place such as material footprint, ecological footprint, and sustainable development index. The method of the study is through using institutions and policies to promote natural resource conservation, pollution management and sustainable use. This research is different from the existing research as different measures are used regarding environmental sustainability. The three different measures used for examining how natural resources influence environmental sustainability are sustainable development index, ecological footprint and material footprint. The reason the article suggests different measures is useful because sustainable development index, ecological footprint and material footprint provides a more robust analysis of the environmental effect of natural resources than using a single measure of environmental sustainability.

The literature review is divided into the following sections environmental sustainability, and natural resources and the alternative determinants of environmental sustainability. The methods of the study analysed the data in the study in the following way through model specification, sources of data, an estimation strategy, descriptive statistics, cross-sectional dependance, unit root tests, a cointegration test results, the effect of natural resources on environmental sustainability, and marginal impact of NR on ES

The study concluded that “the exploitation of natural resources has been argued to degrade the quality of the environment in SSA. However, stringent environmental regulations are considered to prevent unsafe environmental practices.” The outcome of the study is as follows, “Natural resources degrade the quality of the environment in both EFP and SDI models in both the short and long run. ∙ Environmental regulatory quality, on the other hand, improves environmental sustainability in SSA in both the short- and-long run. ∙ The unrelated view identified in this study is that as environmental regulatory quality improves, natural resources dampen environmental sustainability (Models 1 and 3). ∙ Based on the results, the study concludes that environmental regulatory quality does not complement natural resources to improve environmental sustainability in the case of selected SSA economies.” Further, the article mentions that low carbon technology must be implemented in companies which have no environmental consequences. The final point of the article stated that, “in all, ensuring the above suggestions and paying the greatest attention to inappropriate extraction of natural resources in SSA could have a greater positive influence on environmental sustainability, as the United Nations desired in the 2030 SDGs.”