Volatility in the prices of natural resources particularly in the Covid-19 period is the subject of major concern in recent times. Although many studies have empirically investigated the influence of ...oil prices on economic growth and Covid-19 on oil prices. However, the current study contributes to the literature by investigating the causal linkage of natural resources commodity prices and economic growth in the pre and post Covid-19 period for China over the period from January 01, 2019, to April 01, 2021. This study employed the wavelet power spectrum, and the wavelet coherence approaches, and the frequency domain causality test, which is known for the causal identification in the long-run, medium-run, and short-run. The empirical findings reveal that the natural resource commodity prices are more vulnerable than the economic performance particularly in the Covid-19 peak period in China. However, the wavelet coherence approach demonstrates that a bidirectional causal association exists between natural resources commodity prices and economic performance at different frequencies and time periods. Additionally, the frequency domain causality test confirms that the natural resource commodity prices volatility significantly causes economic performance only in the medium-run. Based on the empirical findings, this study recommends that innovative technological and precautionary measures must be taken to accommodate or overcome natural disasters in the future, and tackle natural resources commodity prices volatility.
•Natural Resource Commodity Price Volatility and Economic growth have been tested.•Wavelet power spectrum and coherence approaches are used.•Higher volatility has been found in the natural resource commodity price during COVID-19 period.•Natural resource commodity price causes economic performance in the medium-run.
In line with global targets agreed under the Convention on Biological Diversity, the number of marine protected areas (MPAs) is increasing rapidly, yet socio-economic benefits generated by MPAs ...remain difficult to predict and under debate. MPAs often fail to reach their full potential as a consequence of factors such as illegal harvesting, regulations that legally allow detrimental harvesting, or emigration of animals outside boundaries because of continuous habitat or inadequate size of reserve. Here we show that the conservation benefits of 87 MPAs investigated worldwide increase exponentially with the accumulation of five key features: no take, well enforced, old (>10 years), large (>100 km(2)), and isolated by deep water or sand. Using effective MPAs with four or five key features as an unfished standard, comparisons of underwater survey data from effective MPAs with predictions based on survey data from fished coasts indicate that total fish biomass has declined about two-thirds from historical baselines as a result of fishing. Effective MPAs also had twice as many large (>250 mm total length) fish species per transect, five times more large fish biomass, and fourteen times more shark biomass than fished areas. Most (59%) of the MPAs studied had only one or two key features and were not ecologically distinguishable from fished sites. Our results show that global conservation targets based on area alone will not optimize protection of marine biodiversity. More emphasis is needed on better MPA design, durable management and compliance to ensure that MPAs achieve their desired conservation value.
The ecological footprint, a measure of human demand on earth’s ecosystems, represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area that is necessary to supply the resources a human ...population consumes and to mitigate associated waste. This study estimates the impact of economic growth and natural resources on Pakistan’s ecological footprint using an autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) model for long-run estimation. The empirical findings indicate that natural resources have a positive effect on an ecological footprint that deteriorates environmental quality and that natural resources help to support the environmental Kuznets hypothesis (EKC). Bidirectional causality is found between natural resources and the ecological footprint, along with a long-run causality between biocapacity and the ecological footprint. The innovative findings have important implications for policy.
In the era of development, the world is facing severe challenges, and environmental degradation is one of them. However, the globe has tried to introduce several initiatives to fight for ...environmental sustainability, such as the Sustainable Development Goals. The leading role of the proposed goals is to balance development and environmental anxiety. Therefore, to these issues, artificial intelligence and technological advancements play a vital role in the natural resource economy in the digital age. Policy analysts are always looking for solutions and have come up with several viable remedies to this problem. Consequently, information & communication technology (ICT) plays a significant role in sustainability in the digital era. However, under the theme of natural resource sustainability, the effectiveness of ICT has a significant impact on sustainability. Accordingly, the current study investigates the long-run effect of income per capita, tourism, natural resources rents, urbanization, and ICT on environmental sustainability in 36 OECD economies from 2000 to 2018. The current research employs an Augmented Mean Group (AMG) and two-step GMM to investigate the study's objectives. Results show the positive contribution of urbanization, natural resources, and tourism to CO2 emissions, while ICT reduces emissions. Besides, an inverted EKC curve is also validated for selected economies. In addition, the moderate effect of ICT on urbanization, natural resources, and tourism shows a significant decline in CO2 emissions. In light of the findings, this study recommends several crucial measures for environmental sustainability.
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•The data presents a substantial benchmark to summarize sustainable development goals (SDGs) in the era of digitalization.•This study tries to investigate the impact of ICT on CO2 in digitalized era.•Natural resources, URB and tourism raise the carbon emissions.•ICT significantly improves the environmental quality.•Moderate role ICT also significantly contributes to environmental sustainability.
Humanity will soon define a new era for nature-one that seeks to transform decades of underwhelming responses to the global biodiversity crisis. Area-based conservation efforts, which include both ...protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, are likely to extend and diversify. However, persistent shortfalls in ecological representation and management effectiveness diminish the potential role of area-based conservation in stemming biodiversity loss. Here we show how the expansion of protected areas by national governments since 2010 has had limited success in increasing the coverage across different elements of biodiversity (ecoregions, 12,056 threatened species, 'Key Biodiversity Areas' and wilderness areas) and ecosystem services (productive fisheries, and carbon services on land and sea). To be more successful after 2020, area-based conservation must contribute more effectively to meeting global biodiversity goals-ranging from preventing extinctions to retaining the most-intact ecosystems-and must better collaborate with the many Indigenous peoples, community groups and private initiatives that are central to the successful conservation of biodiversity. The long-term success of area-based conservation requires parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity to secure adequate financing, plan for climate change and make biodiversity conservation a far stronger part of land, water and sea management policies.
The natural resource curse hypothesis is largely discussed in the empirical literature; however, little is known regarding the financial resource curse hypothesis through the integration of business ...regulations. Also, most empirical research in the literature has used conventional estimation methods. To address these research gaps, this paper examines the financial resource curse hypothesis by scrutinizing the linkage between financial development and natural resources rent from 1984 to 2018. Empirical results validate the financial resource curse hypothesis. Business regulations encourage financial development and neutralize the negative consequences of natural resources on financial development. It implies that conducive business regulations mitigate the financial resource curse in ASEAN countries. This condition may be considered essential for the sustainability of natural resource rent-related advancements in financial development, and appropriate policy recommendations could be put forward.
•Examined financial resource curse hypothesis in ASEAN countries.•Scrutinized the linkage between financial development and natural resources.•The cross-sectional augmented ARDL model is used for analysis purposes.•Results validate the financial resource curse hypothesis.•Business regulations moderate financial development and natural resources linkage.
This article uses the Super-efficiency DEA mothod to calculate the regional ecological efficiency, and selects a Tobit model to verify the impact of green finance and natural resource abundance on ...Chinese regional ecological efficiency. Results as follows: (1) The ecological efficiency of the eastern region is highest, and western region is lowest. Most of the low-efficiency areas are concentrated in the west. Then the ecological efficiency of most areas in Chian has shown an increasing trend. (2) From the perspective of explanatory variables, there is a negative correlation between the overall national green finance and eco-efficiency, which is manifested in a non-linear “U”-shaped characteristic; green finance and eco-efficiency in the central and western regions have negative correlation and “U”-shaped characteristic of non-linear relationship, but the east of China does not passed the significance test. (3) There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the country's overall resource abundance and ecological efficiency. And it is not statistically significant in the eastern region, but it shows a significant inverted U-shaped relationship in the central and west of China. (4) The impact of FDI on China's regional eco-efficiency is generally positive. FDI in the central and western regions has negative correlation with eco-efficiency, but FDI in the eastern region is positively related to eco-efficiency; there are all negatively correlated in whole countey and regions between industrial structure and eco-efficiency; the level of regional economic development is generally positively related to regional eco-efficiency, and in the eastern region's eco-efficiency is positive, and the impact on the other two regions is negative.
•Constructed an ecological efficiency evaluation index system.•Measured the eco-efficiency of different regions.•Verify the impact of green finance on Chinese regional ecological efficiency.•Verify the impact of natural resource abundance on Chinese regional ecological efficiency.•Provide advice for sustainable development.
Over half of the European landscape is under agricultural management and has been for millennia. Many species and ecosystems of conservation concern in Europe depend on agricultural management and ...are showing ongoing declines. Agri‐environment schemes (AES) are designed partly to address this. They are a major source of nature conservation funding within the European Union (EU) and the highest conservation expenditure in Europe. We reviewed the structure of current AES across Europe. Since a 2003 review questioned the overall effectiveness of AES for biodiversity, there has been a plethora of case studies and meta‐analyses examining their effectiveness. Most syntheses demonstrate general increases in farmland biodiversity in response to AES, with the size of the effect depending on the structure and management of the surrounding landscape. This is important in the light of successive EU enlargement and ongoing reforms of AES. We examined the change in effect size over time by merging the data sets of 3 recent meta‐analyses and found that schemes implemented after revision of the EU's agri‐environmental programs in 2007 were not more effective than schemes implemented before revision. Furthermore, schemes aimed at areas out of production (such as field margins and hedgerows) are more effective at enhancing species richness than those aimed at productive areas (such as arable crops or grasslands). Outstanding research questions include whether AES enhance ecosystem services, whether they are more effective in agriculturally marginal areas than in intensively farmed areas, whether they are more or less cost‐effective for farmland biodiversity than protected areas, and how much their effectiveness is influenced by farmer training and advice? The general lesson from the European experience is that AES can be effective for conserving wildlife on farmland, but they are expensive and need to be carefully designed and targeted.
With increasing concerns over climate change and the global consensus regarding low carbon growth, the transition of resource-based regions has become urgent and challenging. We employ a Slacks-Based ...Measure with windows analysis approach to estimate the carbon emissions efficiency and abatement potential of China's provinces over the period of 2003–2016. A panel Tobit model is further employed to analyze the direct and indirect effects of natural resource abundance on emissions efficiency. We find that: (1) There exists a negative correlation between resource abundance and carbon emissions efficiency. The more abundant the resources, the lower the emissions efficiency. (2) Although emissions efficiency and abatement potential are generally negatively correlated, abatement potential also depends on the scale of the economy. (3) Resource dependence is unfavourable for the rationalization and advancement of the industrial structure, which indirectly affects the carbon emissions efficiency. These findings imply that resource-based regions should make the improvement of emissions efficiency and the exploration of abatement potential as their top priority of actions for a low-carbon transition, and promote the transformation of industrial structure in order to obtain a double dividend in sustainable development and carbon emissions efficiency.
•Carbon emissions efficiency and abatement potential are calculated.•Two perspectives of resource dependence and endowment are considered.•The direct and indirect effects of natural resource abundance are analyzed.•The carbon abatement potential in resource-based regions is still large.•Promoting the transformation of industrial structures can obtain a double dividend.
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