Effect of Agricultural Employment and Export Diversification Index on Environmental Pollution: Building the Agenda towards Sustainability

Agricultural activities have a significant impact on environmental quality, because they generate waste that pollutes water and soil. In parallel, the supply of products has diversified in recent years to meet growing demand, exerting strong pressure on nature’s capacity for regeneration and absorption of waste. This research aims to examine the impact of agricultural employment and the export diversification index on ecological footprints, using advanced techniques of panel data econometrics. This relationship is moderated by population density and real per capita product. Cross-section dependence and slope homogeneity were included in the econometric models. The cointegration and causality analysis was reinforced by estimating the short- and long-term elasticities, using the AMG, CCE-MG, FMOLS, and DOLS models. Using annual data for 96 countries, we found a heterogeneous impact of agricultural employment and the export diversification index on ecological footprint, between the short and long term. The findings reveal that the increase of the product increases the pressure on the ecological footprint. The achievement of SDGs must include joint efforts between countries, and not in isolation. Those responsible for environmental policy should promote the idea that production must be friendly to the environment and promote the green growth of countries. The adoption of new technology, higher productivity agricultural employment, and the regulation of exports of sustainable products can contribute to achieving environmental sustainability.

Do Diversified Export, Agriculture, and Cleaner Energy Consumption Induce Atmospheric Pollution in Asia? Application of Method of Moments Quantile Regression

Sustainable development remains unattainable unless we move to reduce the negative impact of economic factors on environmental quality. It is noteworthy to provide new evidence on whether and how the empirical association between export diversification, agricultural value-addition, renewable energy, and regulatory quality with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions evolved in Asian countries from 1996 to 2014. The study examines the relationships between these variables using current panel data techniques. The econometric procedure includes second-generation cointegration and unit root tests together with a novel Method of Movements Quantile Regression (MMQR). This approach offers an asymmetric relationship between the variables and is very robust to outliers compared to traditional quantile regression. The empirical outcomes show that export diversification, renewable energy, and regulatory quality are significantly and negatively associated with GHG emissions. In contrast, agricultural value-added in Asia has become a source of increased GHG emissions. Our findings are also robust with alternate specifications, including fully modified, dynamic and fixed effect regressions. This study will help policymakers for diversifying their export portfolio while ensuring a sustainable environment in Asia.

Role of Export Diversification and Renewable Energy on the Load Capacity Factor in Indonesia: A Fourier Quantile Causality Approach

Sustainable development and reducing environmental pressure are major issues that concern developed as well as developing countries. Although researchers widely use carbon dioxide emissions and ecological footprint within the scope of environmental degradation, a more comprehensive ecological indicator is needed to assess environmental sustainability. In this context, the load capacity factor enables a comprehensive environmental sustainability assessment through the simultaneous analysis of biocapacity and ecological footprint. However, there are few studies analyzing the determinants of load capacity factor and this study aims to fill this gap for Indonesia. Using the recently developed Fourier quantile causality test, this study investigates the impact of income, export diversification, non-renewable and renewable energy consumption on the load capacity factor for Indonesia during 1965Q1–2014Q4. The results show unidirectional causality from non-renewable energy consumption to the load capacity factor at all quantiles, while income, export diversification, and renewable energy are the causes of environmental quality at middle and higher quantiles (within 0.5, 0.7, and 0.9). Most importantly, renewable energy and export diversification increase the load capacity factor and thus support environmental quality. In contrast, an increase in income and consumption of non-renewable energy reduces the load capacity factor. These results highlight the importance of renewable energy and export diversification for the sustainable development of Indonesia.

Investigating the Relationship Between Export Diversification and River Water Pollution: A Time Series Analysis of the Indian Experience

This article attempts to test the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for export diversification and river water pollution (proxied by biochemical oxygen demand) for India during the period from 1986 to 2019. Over the past decade, India’s merchandise exports have been dominated by pollution-intensive industries such as mineral fuels, pharmaceuticals, nuclear reactors, organic chemicals and electrical machinery, iron and steel, and textiles. Additionally, India’s export mix is weakly diversified or a small number of commodities form the merchandise export basket. River water pollution is one of the gravest ecological threats in this country. Although a host of reasons define this ecological devastation, this study attempts to investigate if the weakly diversified, pollution-intensive export basket has any link with biochemical oxygen demand. Dickey–Fuller (ADF) and Philip–Perron (PP) tests are employed to determine the stationary properties of the variables and the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) cointegration test, as well as the bounds test to check the short- and long-run cointegration. Findings suggest that (a) export diversification is strongly cointegrated with biochemical oxygen demand both in the short and in the long run, and (b) the conventional inverted U-shaped EKC was not validated. Furthermore, a weakly diversified export basket increases water pollution. Suggested policy initiatives to combat industrial water pollution include the introduction of economic instruments. The water pollution abatement experience of industrial clusters suggests that radical institutional and governance reforms are paramount for successful policy reforms. Finally, there is a need to reduce the export commodity basket concentration not just to insulate the economy against global dynamics but also for achieving the goal of sustainable development. JEL codes: F18, Q56, Q53. Q580