Impact of Economic Growth, Finance and Trade Nexus on Environmental Degradation in Selected Emerging Countries

Abstract

Most of the papers that examined the EKC put emphasis on atmospheric indicators, while ignoring other environmental factors like land, coastal, sea, freshwater, biodiversity and coral reefs. This study aims at investigating the EKC by utilizing biodiversity indicator (capture fisheries production), therefore to the best of our knowledge this is the novel contribution of this study both to existing literature and practice. The study used 16 nations of which 11 are newly industrialized and the other 5 are members of the BRICS countries, and the data was collected from World Development indicators of the (World development indicators. World Bank, Washington, 2019). An improved robust panel GMM techniques was employed, to be specific, the study used the Arellano–Bover/Blundel–Bond (J. Econometrics 68:29–51, 1995; J. Econometrics 87:115–143, 1998). The analysis highlighted that the inverted N-shaped link exist between biodiversity and economic growth in a panel of selected countries in the short-term. The introduction of control variables to our regression apparatus altered the steepness of the inverted N-shaped pattern between biodiversity and growth. In order to provide robust public policy recommendations, short-term and long-term elasticity estimates were utilized.