An examination of the relationship between industry structure, debt and multilateral environmental agreements and environmental performance

Abstract

The United Nations established the Sustainable Development Goals as targets to be achieved by 2030. As part of this initiative, countries worldwide are making efforts to improve on their environmental performance. This study uses environmental performance data for 180 countries provided by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy to assess the impact of certain important variables on environmental performance. Among other things, it finds that industry structure and commitment to multinational environmental agreements positively impact how well a country performs environmentally. The same was not found to be true for country debt. The paper also created clusters of countries for environmental performance over a period of about 20 years. The study's results have several policy implications for governments as well as international bodies that seek to promote environmental improvement around the world.