Environmental sustainability, terrorism, and military expenditure in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from panel quantile ARDL regression and panel causality

Abstract

The prevalence of terrorism and military expenditure in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is experiencing rapid and significant growth over time. This study investigates the impact of terrorism and military expenditure on environmental sustainability in 35 economies in SSA from 1990 to 2021, utilizing panel quantile autoregressive distributed lag regression and causality analysis techniques to bridge the gap in existing studies on the military expenditure, environmental sustainability, and terrorism nexus. The study's novelty is evident because it assesses the short-term and long-term impacts of military expenditure and other covariates across various quantiles of CO2 emissions. The study achieves this by categorizing SSA nations based on their varying levels of CO2 emissions, specifically low, moderate, and high, an approach that is extremely rare among SSA countries. The study's findings revealed that terrorism and military expenditure have a positive impact on CO2 emissions across the quantiles, implying that these variables contribute to environmental degradation in the region. The study also reveals a bidirectional relationship between CO2 emissions and the selected predictors (terrorism, military expenditure, trade, and economic growth). Thus, the study proposes military strategies and macroeconomic policies that ensure environmental sustainability.