Fecha de publicación: 28/10/2024 Fuente: Journal of Sustainable Development Abstract
Balancing economic expansion and environmental sustainability in Africa is critical, as rising CO2 emissions threaten the continent’s commitment to global climate goals. Despite widespread acknowledgment, a significant gap in understanding the sector-specific contributions to emissions persists. This empirical study examines the impact of economic expansion, total natural resource rents, and energy consumption on CO2 emissions in 48 African countries from 2000 to 2022. The study utilized a combination of linear and nonlinear machine learning models, OLS-linear regression, random forest, extra trees, histogram gradient boosting, and decision trees to assess the intricate relationships between these variables. Ensemble methods, incorporating boosting and bagging techniques, were also employed to enhance model accuracy. Additionally, impulse response and variance decomposition analyses were conducted to forecast the long-term impact of variable changes on CO2 over the next decade. The findings reveal several critical insights: First, economic expansion and energy consumption promote CO2 emissions in the study area. The same hypothesis was repeated for their interactive effect on CO2. Second, total natural resource rents positively impact environmental sustainability across the continent. The analysis indicates that if these trends are left unchecked, they could severely undermine efforts to achieve environmental sustainability in Africa. Third, the impulse response and variance decomposition results indicate that over the next ten years, variations in energy use will have a more substantial impact on CO2 than fluctuations in natural resource rents and economic expansion. We, therefore, suggested a valuable baseline for economy-energy-resources-carbon nexus policy implications to reduce CO2 across the continent.