THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION: EVIDENCE FROM ARAB COUNTRIES

Abstract

Air pollution is among the most convincing environmental threats in the Arab region. The knowledge economy has the potential to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) by promoting sustainable development and encouraging the creation and implementation of clean technology products that are more efficient and less environmentally harmful. The knowledge-pollution relationship and the validity of the EKC hypothesis were examined in this paper during the period 2000–2020 for a sample of 11 Arab countries, namely: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, and Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia, using the extended environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) framework. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is applied to achieve this aim. The long-term results refuted the validity of the EKC theory by showing that knowledge has no quadratic relationship to CO2. By substituting the sub-indicators for the knowledge index, the long-run coefficients reveal that only the ICT pillar significantly impacted pollution since it accelerates CO2 emissions. In the short term, the obtained outcomes demonstrate that ICT raises the quality of the environment while EIR increases pollution levels. The paper shows that the Arab countries should make greater efforts to accelerate their transition to knowledge economies in order to benefit from the beneficial effects of this economy in combating environmental pollution and increase investment in knowledge bases to lessen environmental deterioration. Therefore, in light of the effect of ICTs on environmental pollution, Arab governments are advised to advance their emissions targets by encouraging the successful implementation of effective ICT strategies and projects in the environmental field.