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.

Energy intensity reduction is an exigent issue for Iran, where energy consumption is so high. Therefore, finding effective policies to reduce energy intensity is essential. With this in mind, the impact of financial development, government investment, oil revenues, and trade openness on energy intensity is assessed in this study. We combined structural vector error correction model (SVECM) and directed acyclic graphs (DAG) technique to examine the relationships between study variables. The results of DAG prove that financial development, government investment, oil revenues, and trade openness influence the intensity of energy. Besides, the significant and long-run relationships among variables allowed us to apply SVECM. Impulse response functions and variance decomposition analysis indicate that government investment, oil revenues, and trade openness are negatively associated with the intensity of energy. Also, financial development positively influences energy intensity. Meanwhile, the impact of government investment is more significant than oil revenues, trade openness, and financial development impacts. So, government investment is the most effective policy regarding optimizing the consumption of energy and reducing energy intensity. We also advise policymakers to use oil revenues to increase government investment, enhance trade openness, and tax the private sector to improve the level of energy intensity.

This study is the first attempt to examine the effects of changing climate and financial development on rice cultivation in the context of agrarian economy like Thailand from 1969 to 2016. The current study also uses other important variables, such as cultivated area, organic fertilizers usage, and rural labor to determine the long-term connection amid variables. In this study, we applied several econometric techniques, for instance the autoregressive distributive lag–error correction model (ARDL–ECM), vector error correction model (VECM), impulse response functions (IMFs), and variance decomposition (VARD) method to estimate the most reliable and robust outcomes. The empirical results showed that in the long- and short-run, there is a reduction in rice cultivation as temperature increase. The carbon dioxide (CO₂) positively affects rice cultivation in the long-run, while this association is negative in the short-run. The findings further revealed that in the long- and short-run, domestic credit provided by the financial sector significantly positive improved rice cultivation, while domestic credit to private sector by banks negatively affects rice cultivation. The important input factors, including cultivated area, organic fertilizers usage, and rural labor significantly positive contributed toward rice cultivation in the long- and short-run. The calculated long-run causal connection of all the studied variables with rice cultivation is validated. The estimated short-run causal relationship is unidirectional among temperature, CO₂ emissions, financial development, rural labor, and rice cultivation. In addition, our outcomes are robust and also verified by IMFs and VARD method. The study offers some important policy suggestions to increase rice production with the help of sound and well-developed financial systems and climate controls.

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.

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.

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.

The present research article uses simultaneous equation modelling approach to investigate the three-way linkages between economic growth, energy consumption, and environmental quality in Turkey for the 1970 to 2014 period. Further, the study uses physical capital stock, labour force, manufacturing value added, trade openness, credit to private sector, and urbanisation as control variables. The paper employs generalised method of moments (GMM) technique that ensures consistent and efficient estimates of the long-run relationship. The econometric approach controls for nonstationarity, endogeneity, cross-error correlation, and heteroscedasticity problems. Further, robustness of the results is checked by using three-stage least squares (3SLS) estimator. The statistical results of the paper support the existence of bidirectional causality between energy consumption and economic growth, CO₂ emissions and economic growth, and CO₂ emissions and energy consumption. Moreover, the results indicate existence of a monotonically increasing relationship between CO₂ emissions and economic growth implying non-existence of Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis in Turkey during the sample period. The findings of the present study are of particular interest to policymakers as they help pursue economic policies to achieve sustainable development.