Human capital and manufacturing activities under environmentally-driven urbanization in the MENA region
Özet
Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region possesses immense capacity for
renewable energy generation. Despite the potential, most countries in the region
are yet to fully embrace renewable energy. Non-renewable sources still dominate
their energy mix. This study examines the interplay between urbanization,
renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, and environmental quality
in the six Middle Eastern and North African countries from 1990 to 2021, using the
mean group (MG), the mean group dynamic least squares (DOLSMG), the
common correlated effect (CCE), augmented mean group (AMG) and the
cross-section augmented ARDL (CS–ARDL). Accounting for urbanization, and
economic growth, the findings of DOLSMG indicate that while renewable energy
and manufacturing activities significantly contribute to environmental quality,
urbanization and human capital development significantly contributes to
environmental degradation. The CS-ARDL short-term and long run estimation
result showed that manufacturing activities significantly contribute to
environmental quality, When examined by country, it was found that there is a
unidirectional causal relationship from economic growth, manufacturing value
added, urbanization, human capital development to dioxide emissions in Saudi
Arabia. While there is a unidirectional causality from manufacturing value added to
dioxide emissions in Jordan, and a unidirectional causality from urbanization to
dioxide emissions in Tunisia.
