Many local governments wanting to finance construction of water pollution control facilities through the sale of municipal bonds are required to obtain authorization from the electorate in the form of a bond referendum. Since defeat of such a bond issue can result in significant delay in implementation of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, it is important that EPA understand the factors which affect the outcome of these elections. The study contains conclusions and recommendations about the process by which the project is planned, the role of the bond market, and the referendum as an approval mechanism for public expenditures.

A major issue for governments in the past few decades has been environmental deterioration caused by economic activity. Researchers are increasingly interested in the factors that contribute to environmental deterioration. This research fills the empirical gaps by looking at the influence of carbon footprints of growth and R&D investment on green finance development of renewable energy. Ordinary least square (OLS) is used in this work to assess the long-term connection between chosen variables in South Asia from 1995 to 2018. The importance of green finance, clean energy, and green financial instability have been identified as major variables. According to the study’s overall findings, clean energy, green finance, and sustainable economic growth are all important and positive indicators of a composite assessment of sustainable practices. Green bonds, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and green economic development all play an important part in green finance development and renewable energy production. The research also found that R&D expenditures had a positive and substantial influence on green finance development in South Asia, with a 1% increase in R&D expenditures lowering the sustainability of the environment by 0.070% and 0.080%. Other practical consequences for South Asia include a more suitable path toward a greener economy, as suggested by the projected findings.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is a new agricultural development pattern to address future food crises. Since CSA was proposed in 2010, it has attracted the attention of scholars from all over the world. It is of great significance to scientifically summarize the overview and emerging trends of CSA research, providing ideas for scholars concerned about CSA to engage in research in this field. Based on bibliometrics and CSA-related literature data in the WOS database, this paper used CiteSpace software to draw knowledge maps to scientifically analyze publications in the field of CSA. Our study found that (1) CSA research is showing a rapid upward trend, focusing on the environmental sciences and agricultural economic management; (2) international organizations such as the FAO, World Bank, and the international agricultural research institute have made significant contributions to CSA research; (3) among the nine clusters in the CSA literature, CSA practice, conservation agriculture, smallholder farmers, and sub-Saharan Africa have been consistently given high attention; (4) CSA research can be divided into three phases, and the research hotspots have transferred from essential elements of CSA to household and carbon emissions. We believe that in future research, more attention should be paid to the trade-off and synergy of the three pillars of CSA, as well as the investment, finance, and evaluation criteria of CSA. Such strengthening is of great significance to the sustainable promotion of CSA.

Recently, the rapid development of digital finance in China has exerted a subtle influence on many aspects of social and economic development. However, the research on the impact of digital finance on corporate green innovation is rather lacking. In order to fill this gap, this paper uses the “Peking University Digital Finance Index” to evaluate the micro impact of financial innovation development on environmental governance from the firm level. The results show that digital finance can significantly improve the quantity and quality of corporate green innovation, and this effect still exists after considering endogeneity and a series of robustness tests. The promotion effect of digital finance on the quantity and quality of corporate green innovation is more obvious in state-owned, eastern, and mature enterprises. In addition, we find the mechanism behind the positive relationship between digital finance and corporate green innovation: digital finance makes firms more transparent and funds flow more convenient. Overall, this paper provides a micro explanation of environmental governance for the accelerated popularization of digital finance in emerging markets, which is urgently needed for most emerging economies seeking high-quality development.

The relationship between financial development and energy consumption is the most frequently research field in finance and economy. The main objective of performing this study is to answer that is there a relationship between financial development and renewable energy consumption in emerging countries? In many studies carried out in literature, the empirical findings were pointing to the existence of thiss relationship. To examine the relationship between financial development and renewable energy consumption, a total of 20 emerging countries were obtained from annual frequency data between 1990 and 2015. The system GMM estimation was used as the method of study. As a result of the analysis performed, it indicates that financial development does not impact renewable energy consumption in emerging countries when financial development is measured using both banking and stock market variables. Additionally, it can be said that the financial development increases renewable energy consumption if it is measured by only stock market capitalization.

This article discusses the influence and mechanism of green finance on carbon emission efficiency. Based on the panel data of 27 provinces and municipality in China from 2008 to 2017, the slack-based model of unexpected output is used to measure the efficiency of carbon emissions. On this basis, the Tobit model is used to empirically study the impact and mechanism of green finance on the efficiency of carbon emissions. The consequences exhibit that (1) China’s carbon emission efficiency is not high and generally presents a gradient decreasing characteristic of east, middle, and west. (2) Overall, green finance plays a considerable role in improving carbon emission efficiency; by region and group, there are significant differences in the influence of green finance on carbon emission efficiency. (3) The study found that green finance promotes the efficiency of carbon emission through technological progress and industrial structure upgrading. This study provides empirical evidence and policy enlightenment for the realization of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals and the evolution of green finance.

The issues of cleaner production and socioeconomic advancements have taken a central stage due to the dynamism of the correlation between energy use and ecology. Given this background, the research delves into how to construct a framework to unravel diverse understandings of energy policy vis-a-vis green economy by examining the mediating role of financial inclusion. The analysis applied a non-radial DEA and longitudinal dataset model for the scenarios of thirty regions in China, relying on their longitudinal dataset from 2010–2017. The findings indicate that the Chinese regions’ total green economic performance indicator (EPI) has advanced by 9.88% between 2010 and 2017. In addition, the econometric analyses prove that regional renewable energy policies and pollution abatement programs explicitly influence the improvement of the environmental performance index. Again, the results show that the probability figures of the individual specific limit equation and the dual limit values crossed the 1% significance analysis level simultaneously, indicating a dual limit impact. 0.74 to 1 is the range that marks the green EPI for Jiangsu, Shandong, Guangdong, Hainan, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Fujian. Ultimately, the analysis serves as a policy inference tool for policy formulators and regulators on encouraging green economic performance in China.

Environmental sustainability has become one of the most common phrases in discussions about climate change. This study examines the impact of clean energy investment and financial development on environmental sustainability and China’s economic growth, using manufacturing value-added and urbanization as moderator variables from 1970 to 2016. We used advanced econometric methodologies for empirical estimations, used structural break unit root tests, fully modified least square, dynamic least square, and robust least square multiple regressions for long-run estimates. Overall, the results determine that clean energy investment is negatively associated with CO₂ emissions and ecological footprint while positively associated with China’s economic growth. Financial development, manufacturing value-added, and urbanization are positively associated with CO₂ emissions, ecological footprint, and China’s economic growth. Moreover, clean energy investment improves environmental sustainability at the expense of economic growth. Financial development, manufacturing value-added, and urbanization encourage economic growth at the expense of environmental sustainability. We argued that the local governments play a critical role in lifting the outstanding barriers to cleaner energy investment, addressing disincentives, including pricing carbon dioxide emissions, reforming inefficient nonrenewable fossil fuel subsidies, and addressing regulatory and market rigidities that can undesirably affect the attractiveness of clean energy investment. Policymakers are suggested to encourage green finance strategy for the financial sector to broader sustainable development objectives. At the heart of green manufacturing, industrialization policies are needed to integrate diverse intentions, like inclusive growth, environmental protection, and productivity through a wider range of economic, social, and environmental policy frameworks suitable for decoupling growth from social and environmental unsustainability.

This article examines the impacts of cross-border economic sanction (CES) on environmental performance by using the structural gravity model for 207 target countries during the 1995–2018 period. We consider various forms of sanction, including arms, military, trade, finance, travel, and others, while the environmental performance index (EPI) is used to measure the environmental performance. The results reveal that the imposition of a sanction, especially arm, financial, travel, and other sanctions has a significantly negative effect on the EPI score. The effects are also largely heterogeneous across sanctioned countries in terms of their economic development. The negative impact of sanctions on the environmental performance is found the most evident in developing transition countries, followed by developed economies but insignificant if the target is a developing nation. Furthermore, the properties of the financial market and the institutional quality of the sanctioned states critically affect the relationship between CES and EPI. Particularly, either the better financial market and institution development, the high degree of financial openness, central bank independence, or well-developed institutional quality helps target countries mitigate the consequences of CES on EPI. The empirical findings provide insightful implications about the socially responsible aspect of sanctions and vital lessons for economists and policymakers in the target countries in reducing the environmental costs of sanctions.

In recent times, the persistent global environmental challenges have paved the way for the underpinning of climate change within the perspective of financial performance. Given this motivation, the current study further examines the interaction of foreign direct investment, fiscal development, renewable energy usage, economic growth, and CO₂ outrush of South Africa (1970 to 2014). The unit root test of Zivot-Andrews and augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF), vector autoregressive (VAR), and Pesaran ARDL (autoregressive distributed lag bounds) approach were employed in the data analysis. The existence of a statistically significant correlation among the series was detected by the Johansen multivariate cointegration in long term and subsequently by the long run coefficient of the vector error correction model test result. Furthermore, in the long run, significant positive correlation existed among renewable energy, GDP (economic growth), development in finance (FD), and CO₂ outrush. While in the short run, GDP and development in finance have a statistically positive correlation with outrush of CO₂; renewable energy consumption exerts a negative relationship on CO₂ in the short run. The Granger causality results show overall causality among the series; proof of bidirectional stimulus running from renewable energy to economic growth; foreign direct investment to trade; and also one causality direction running among the other variables. The policy twist is that the implementation of energy efficiency programs currently pursued by the South African government to enhance renewable energy consumption should be facilitated with more determination. In addition, the government and policymakers should thrive to align these energy efficiency programs with other macroeconomic and financial variables such as foreign direct investment (FDI), fiscal development, and trade openness to achieve minimum CO₂ outrush level in South Africa, thus yielding environmental sustainability.