The Effect of Environmental Degradation on Health Status: Do Institutions Matter?
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The Effect of Environmental Degradation on Health Status: Do Institutions Matter? Najeh Bouchoucha 1 Received: 17 February 2020 / Accepted: 30 July 2020/ # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between environmental degradation, health, and institutional quality in 17 Middle East and North African (MENA) countries. We use a panel cointegration analysis to determine the long-run relationship over the period 1996–2018, using both FMOLS and DOLS methods. Our results suggest that environmental degradation affects negatively the health status in the long run in MENA countries. However, the effect of environmental degradation on health can be ameliorated through the presence of good institutional quality. Therefore, policymakers in MENA countries should enhance the role of good governance in order to ensure the successful implementation of environmental laws. Keywords Environmental degradation . Health . FMOLS . DOLS . MENA
Introduction Environmental quality occupies a central position in the process of economic growth and economic development. In fact, the deterioration of environmental quality can be explained especially by the increase in carbon dioxide emissions, which is due to the use of energy resources such as oil, coal, and natural gas (Ahmad et al. 2016). Therefore, the deterioration of the environment by consumption of pollutant energy sources can have a harmful effect on the quality of human life, therefore, it affects the survival of humanity. Environmental degradation can also threaten the lives of animals and harm plants. Environmental pollution arises when the environment can no longer cope with the dangerous products of human activity. In fact, increased air pollution, including carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, causes serious health problems and creates heavy economic burdens for health care (Ridker (1967)). In fact, according to Unicafe sanitation (WTO), 24% of the world’s diseases can be attributed to environmental * Najeh Bouchoucha [email protected]
1
Faculty of Economic and Management of Sousse, Sousse, Tunisia
Journal of the Knowledge Economy
degradation (Chevrier (2007), Maamri and Ben El Mostafa (2016)). Moreover, according to the WHO (2016), the death rate of around 2.6 million is attributed to the weak environmental quality. Therefore, air quality is becoming one of the major preoccupations for decision-makers in both developed and developing countries because the degradation of the environment has an adverse effect on health status. Thus, institutional quality and good governance should be considered as crucial factors to provide a sound legislation that, when applied efficiently, will permit to reduce the harmful effects of the environment in the global economy (Lau et al. (2014)). This implies that poor governance can lead to poor implementation of environmental policies. Against this backdrop, this paper, therefore, seeks to examine in the first stage the nexus between environmenta
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