Nonlinearity in the relationship between COVID-19 cases and carbon damages: controlling financial development, green energy, and R&D expenditures for shared prosperity

• Published in: Environmental science and pollution research international 2022-01, Vol.29 (4), p.5648-5660
• Main Authors: Anser, Muhammad Khalid, Godil, Danish Iqbal, Khan, Muhammad Azhar, Nassani, Abdelmohsen A., Askar, Sameh E., Zaman, Khalid, Salamun, Hailan, Sasmoko, Indrianti, Yasinta, Abro, Muhammad Moinuddin Qazi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Alternative energy; Aquatic Pollution; Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; Carbon; Carbon Dioxide; Clean energy; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Earth and Environmental Science; Economic Development; Economic growth; Economics; Ecotoxicology; Emissions; Energy consumption; Energy policy; Energy sources; Environment; Environmental Chemistry; Environmental factors; Environmental Health; Environmental science; Expenditures; Green development; Green energy; Health care; Health Expenditures; Health policy; Humans; Industrial production; Nonlinear systems; Nonlinearity; Pandemics; Population density; R&D; Renewable Energy; Renewable fuels; Research & development; Research & development expenditures; Research Article; SARS-CoV-2; Sustainability; Taxation; Viral diseases; Waste Water Technology; Water Management; Water Pollution Control
• ISSN: 0944-1344; 1614-7499; 1614-7499
• DOI: 10.1007/s11356-021-15978-w

The world faces a high alert of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), leading to a million deaths and could become infected to reach a billion numbers. A sizeable amount of scholarly work has been available on different aspects of social-economic and environmental factors. At the same time, many of these studies found the linear (direct) causation between the stated factors. In many cases, the direct relationship is not apparent. The world is unsure about the possible determining factors of the COVID-19 pandemic, which need to be known through conducting nonlinearity (indirect) relationships, which caused the pandemic crisis. The study examined the nonlinear relationship between COVID-19 cases and carbon damages, managing financial development, renewable energy consumption, and innovative capability in a cross section of 65 countries. The results show that inbound foreign direct investment first increases and later decreases because of the increasing coronavirus cases. Further, the rise and fall in the research and development expenditures and population density exhibits increasing coronavirus cases across countries. The continued economic growth initial decreases later increase by adopting standardized operating procedures to contain coronavirus disease. The inter-temporal relationship shows that green energy source and carbon damages would likely influence the coronavirus cases with a variance of 17.127% and 5.440%, respectively, over a time horizon. The policymakers should be carefully designing sustainable healthcare policies, as the cost of carbon emissions leads to severe healthcare issues, which are likely to get exposed to contagious diseases, including COVID-19. The sustainable policy instruments, including renewable fuels in industrial production, advancement in cleaner production technologies, the imposition of carbon taxes on dirty production, and environmental certifications, are a few possible remedies that achieve healthcare sustainability agenda globally.