Renewable Energy and Ecological Sustainability in Africa: Does Foreign Debt and Financial Globalisation Matter?

Abstract

AbstractSince the last decade, ecological preservation has become a critically debated topic in developing and developed nations. Hence, to ensure environmental sustainability, countries and international bodies have been canvassing for measures that support severe restrictions to protect the Earth’s biodiversity. Without such an approach, sustaining the ecological quality needed for sustainable growth and development will be a mirage if current greenhouse gas levels are not tamed. Hence, this study investigated the effect of renewable energy consumption on the ecological sustainability of 44 African countries and the accompanying roles of external debt and financial globalisation in the relationship. Second-generation estimation techniques were employed and deduced inferences from the cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag method used in the study. The study empirically demonstrated that renewable energy is insignificant for ecological sustainability without debt stock and financial globalisation. However, the inclusion of both variables revealed that while renewable energy and financial globalisation accelerated ecological sustainability, external debt worsened it in the short and long-term periods. Therefore, the study proposed relevant policy measures.