Does official development assistance alleviate the environmental pressures during the urbanization of recipient countries? Evidence from the sub-Saharan Africa countries

Although there are many studies on the urbanization-environment nexus, a few studies are related to the least developed countries. To fill the research gap, the long-term equilibrium of urbanization-environment nexus in 37 sub-Saharan African countries, and the impact of official development assistance on the urbanizationenvironment nexus in these countries are investigated in this work. To this end, urbanization is set as the explanatory variable, carbon dioxide emissions and ecological footprint are set as the explained variables, and official development assistance is set as the threshold variable. The results of the proposed nonlinear panel regression models show that effect coefficients of urbanization on carbon emissions and ecological footprint are both positive, which means urbanization increases the environmental pressure in these 37 countries. In addition, there are double threshold effects in official development assistance on urbanization-carbon emissions and urbanization-ecological footprint nexus. As assistance crosses the threshold in turn, the promotion effect of urbanization on carbon emissions first increases and then weakens, and the regression coefficient shows an inverted U shaped change trend. The contribution of urbanization to ecological footprint decreases with the increase of assistance, and the coefficients show a decreasing trend. This indicates that official development assistance reshapes the urbanization-environment nexus in these sub-Saharan African countries, indicating the official development assistance helps sub-Saharan countries to alleviate environmental pressure in the process of urbanization. Some policy implications are proposed. Recipient countries should make rational use of aid and create favorable conditions for the inflow of foreign capital through their own efforts, so as to improve the level of environmental pollution control. Countries should work together to correctly grasp the development opportunities brought by urbanization, and promote the process of urbanization while ensuring the quality of smart cities to reduce carbon emissions.

Automated summary

This study examines the long-term equilibrium of the urbanization-environment nexus in 37 sub-Saharan African countries and the impact of official development assistance on this nexus. The results show that urbanization increases environmental pressure in these countries, and there are double threshold effects of official development assistance on the urbanization-carbon emissions and urbanization-ecological footprint nexus.