Anthropogenic occurring nanoparticles (NPs) have been one of the principal catalytic components of marine pollution throughout its history. The phosphogypsum (PG) factories present environmental risks and evident marine pollution in different parts of the world. Many of these factors continue to operate, however, some have already been abandoned by the private sector. The general objective of this manuscript is to analyze the real nanoparticles (NPs) present on a beach in southern Brazil to illustrate the need to create public policies and projects for environmental recovery. This work focused on real representative sampling of suspended sediments (SSs), and on a modern analytical procedure via advanced electron microscopes (field emission scanning electron microscope-FE-SEM and high resolution transmission electron microscope-HR-TEM coupled with an energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis system-EDS) to analyze NPs containing hazardous elements (HEs). The results presented in this work demonstrate who the size, morphology, among other physical-geochemical characteristics influence in the adsorption of HEs by the NPs and their respective agglomerates. This study is of great importance for carrying out the application of advanced techniques and methods to better understand the formation and transport of NPs on beaches, which allows assisting in the management of waste from plaster factories on a global scale.

This paper explores the governance characteristics of marine plastic debris, some of the factors underpinning its severity, and examines the possibility of harnessing corporate social responsibility (CSR) to manage plastic use within the contextual attitudes of a contemporary global society. It argues that international and domestic law alone are insufficient to resolve the “wicked problem” of marine plastic debris, and investigates the potential of the private sector, through the philosophy of CSR, to assist in reducing the amount and impacts of marine plastic debris. To illustrate how CSR could minimise marine plastic pollution, an industry-targeted code of conduct was developed. Applying CSR would be most effective if implemented in conjunction with facilitating governance frameworks, such as supportive governmental regulation and non-governmental partnerships. This study maintains that management policies must be inclusive of all stakeholders if they are to match the scale and severity of the marine plastic debris issue.

Plastics are the most common form of debris found along the Argentine coastline. The Río de la Plata estuarine area is a relevant case study to describe a situation where ample policy exists against a backdrop of plastics disposed by populated coastal areas, industries, and vessels; with resultant high impacts of plastic pollution on marine turtles and mammals. Policy and institutions are in place but the impact remains due to ineffective waste management, limited public education and awareness, and weaknesses in enforcement of regulations. This context is frequently repeated all over the world. We list possible interventions to increase the effectiveness of policy that require integrating efforts among governments, the private sector, non-governmental organizations and the inhabitants of coastal cities to reduce the amount of plastics reaching the Río de la Plata and protect threatened marine species. What has been identified for Argentina applies to the region and globally.

By applying the ARDL (autoregressive distributed lag) bounds testing method, this study examines the short- and long-term dynamic relationship between carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, economic growth (gross domestic product), industrialization, trade, and urban population in Tanzania from 1990 to 2020. The study found that economic growth, trade, industrialization, and the urban population all contributed to the increase in environmental degradation (i.e., carbon dioxide emissions). However, we found that financial credit (i.e., domestic credit to the private sector) reduces carbon dioxide emissions, and its effects are significant in EKC (environmental Kuznets curve) model. Our findings revealed that economic growth (i.e., income) was responsible for both short- and long-term increases in carbon dioxide emissions in Tanzania. Economic growth is harmful to the environmental quality above a threshold value of 6.23%. Furthermore, the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis is confirmed for Tanzania. Our findings suggest that policymakers should monitor and use the threshold levels to manage carbon dioxide emissions and to protect the environmental quality. Further, a strong focus should be placed on formulating environmental policies (i.e., carbon tax policy) as industrialization, urban population, economic growth, and trade continue to grow in future, restricting carbon dioxide emissions and safeguarding the environment.

Given the alarming deterioration of the environment, the present analysis investigates the role of eco-innovation, natural resources and financial development in influencing the environmental degradation of China. Applying the novel method of quantile ARDL, the current research is beneficial in portraying the dependence patterns of the variables with special emphasis on the nexus of eco-innovation and ecological footprint across numerous quantiles of the distribution which has not been examined so far in the literature. The empirical findings reveal that in the long run, eco-innovation reduces the level of ecological deterioration in China across all quantiles. On the other hand, the results suggest that the increase in credit to the private sector and natural resource rents augments environmental degradation. The outcomes imply that the over-dependence on natural resources and financial development can worsen the goals of sustainable development in China if the strategies of conservation and management are ignored. Moreover, witnessing the favorable role of eco-innovation, competent policies and regulations can be made toward sustainable efficient technologies and eco-friendly energy sources to halt global warming.

In thirst for economic growth, economies are engaged in anti-environmental activities that drive them towards climate change and CO₂ emissions. Extensive CO₂ emissions is a serious threat around the globe, especially in low-income countries that can prove detrimental to the environment. To prevent the worst impacts of carbon emission, it becomes necessary to explore the cause of CO₂ emissions. In this vein, this work is conducted to evaluate the determinants of CO₂ emissions in low-income countries spanning from 2000 to 2020. For estimation of models, panel data techniques are employed. The outcome of the study revealed that trade FDI, urbanization, and GDP per capita are the main contributing factors to environmental degradation. Trade openness has also impacted environmental degradation positively but insignificantly. In contrast, population density and domestic credit to private sector (DCPS) have negatively impacted low-income countries’ carbon emissions. The study extended important policy implications to low-income countries’ governments and environmental policymakers.

This study is hinged on analyzing factors such as agriculture and globalization (de jure trade and financial) that threaten a sustainable environment using two proxies of ecological footprint: carbon and noncarbon ecological footprint in the Philippines while controlling for the influence of fossil to GDP, economic growth, urban population, and financial development using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) framework. The result provides evidence of long‐run stable state among the variables. The result validates inverted U‐shaped pattern of EKC involving relationship between agricultural development and ecological footprint for the Philippines indicating that initially, ecological footprint increases as the agriculture develops and then declines as the agriculture matures to generate efficiency and low carbon. In addition, this study explores elasticities of the variables using ARDL, FMOLS, DOLS, and CCR procedure and found that de jure financial globalization exerts positive influence on ecological footprint in the long run. De jure trade globalization is found to be negative and significant in the long run. It is also found that agricultural level operates below the threshold level required to maximize the growth benefits of agricultural system towards mitigating environmental sustainability. Further empirical result shows a positive relationship between economic growth, fossil fuel, urban-population growth, and ecological footprint, and negative insignificant relationship between credit to private sector and ecological footprint. The government should optimize the use of agricultural land through well-articulated economic integration strategy fashioned to pave way for cleaner and low-carbon technologies sources like solar, geothermal, biomass, biogas, tidal power, photovoltaic, and wind energy in the agricultural production to avoid further deterioration of the environment.

Environmental sustainability is increasing emphasis on global environmental concerns at the forefront of public policy debate. This paper investigates the relationship between energy investments and environmental sustainability in China from 1980 to 2018 while considering the moderating effect of international trade and economic growth under the environment Kuznets curve (EKC) framework. We apply advanced econometric modeling for empirical analysis. Our findings show that energy investment and economic growth are positive, while international trade is negatively associated with ecological footprints. Moreover, economic growth and energy investment deteriorate, while international trade improves environmental sustainability. This empirical evidence suggests the improvements in cleaner energy infrastructure with the participation of the private sector to promote clean energy investment. We argue that policymakers should ensure environmental provisions in the regional and bilateral trade agreements to harmonize the environmental regulations, and develop crucial trade and ecological policy indicators to monitor policy consistency.

According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), tourism sector ranks high in terms of her contribution to economic growth and employment opportunity generation in most economies. Several studies have been documented in the extant literature on the nexus between emission, tourism, and economic growth. However, the role of foreign direct investment that highlights either pollution haven or halo hypothesis and pivotal role of domestic credit to private sector in an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) environment is lacking in the extant literature. To this end, this study used augmented mean group (AMG) and method of moment quantile regression (MM-QR) approaches to explore the nexus between per capital income and its square, tourism, foreign direct investment, domestic credit to private sector and CO₂ emission. Empirical results show that tourism had a negative significant relationship with CO₂ emission. Furthermore, income on the other hand had positive relationship with emissions while its square had negative relationship with emissions. This result also shows the presence of EKC indicating the inverted U-shaped curve. FDI has shown a positive significant relationship with pollution which indicates the pollutant haven hypothesis (PHH), and credit to private sector shows a positive relationship with CO₂ emission. On the causality analysis from Dumitrescu and Hurlin panel causality test, there was a bi-directional causality between: tourism and CO₂ emission, per capital income and CO₂ emission as well as domestic credit and CO₂ emission. From these outcomes, it shows that tourism development is not detrimental to environmental quality in the Mediterranean region investigated. However, there is need for caution on FDI influx and dirty economic activities that might compromise environmental quality in the study bloc.

The link between CO2 emission and its possible determinant, namely financial development, foreign direct investment, economic growth, and energy consumption, gives a significant environmental research place. This study attempts to determine the nonlinear link between CO2 emissions and its determinants in China for the period 1985–2019. Based on the theoretic links and foundation, we develop an asymmetric autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model using annual data in this study. The findings of the nonlinear ARDL suggest that domestic credit from the banks (DCB) has a negative effect on environmental pollution in the short and long run, while domestic credit to the private sector (DCP) has an insignificant negative role in environmental pollution in China. The results show that positive change in DCB causes a decrease in CO2 emissions, while negative change increases it in the short and long term. The coefficient for a positive shock in DCP is a negative, and negative shock in DCP has a significant positive impact on environmental pollution in the short and long run. This means that nonlinear ARDL financial development effects on environmental pollution have deviated from the linear ARDL estimates. Empirical findings also support the presence of asymmetric long-run cointegration among the indicators. The findings also show that energy consumption and real GDP have a significant positive impact on CO2 emissions in the long-run, while foreign direct investment (FDI) improves the environment. Based on the empirical findings, the study endorses the suitable channelization of the finance market towards clean energy projects without compromising economic growth.