Enhancing governance for environmental sustainability in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

This study assesses whether improving governance standards affects environmental quality in 44 countries in sub-Saharan Africa for the period 2000-2012. The empirical evidence is based on Generalised Method of Moments. Bundled and unbundled governance dynamics are used notably: (i) political governance (consisting of political stability and “voice & accountability”); (ii) economic governance (entailing government effectiveness and regulation quality), (iii) institutional governance (represented by the rule of law and corruption-control) and (iv) general governance (encompassing political, economic and institutional governance dynamics). The following hypotheses are tested: (i) Hypothesis 1 (Improving political governance is negatively related to CO2 emissions); (ii) Hypothesis 2 (Increasing economic governance is negatively related to CO2 emissions) and (iii) Hypothesis 3 (Enhancing institutional governance is negatively related to CO2 emissions. Results of the tested hypotheses show that: the validity of Hypothesis 3 cannot be determined based on the results; Hypothesis 2 is not valid while Hypothesis 1 is partially not valid. The main policy implication is that governance standards need to be further improved in order for government quality to generate the expected unfavorable effects on CO2 emissions.