Modelling the economic and social issues related to environmental quality in Nigeria: the role of economic growth and internal conflict.

Abstract

Over the past decades, environmental quality-related issues have occupied a central place in the global discourse with greater concerns to the risk of civil war, terrorism/political violence, civil disorders, and corruption which alter economic sustenance and social structures in the world. This study presents and analyses an empirical model of economic and social issues related to environmental qualitywithin the context of the environment Kuznets curve (EKC) in Nigeria between 1990 and 2016. The empirical results based on the standard ARDL model show that increases in internal conflict and corruption are environmentally deteriorative while increases in renewable energy consumption are found to be a major driver behind environmental quality improvement. The results also show that economic growth stimulates environmental degradation and hence validates the EKC hypothesis in Nigeria. These results are robust across the estimates of the dynamic ARDL simulations with deviation only in the responses ofshocks to internal conflict and corruption which significantly dampen environmental degradation in the short run--and the predicted values remain large over the long run. Furthermore, a unidirectional causal relationship flows from economic growth to ecological footprint, renewable energy, and corruption. Also, renewable energy has a predictive power for ecological footprint. In addition, internal conflict predicts renewable energy, while a change in internal conflict is caused by corruption. These findings, therefore, provide insightful policy implications for stimulating the consumption of renewable energy as a tool for sustainable cleaner environment.