Empirical analysis of South African's urbanization growth and export demands: implications for environmental sustainability

South African economy is widely known to contribute significantly to the carbon emissions due to usage of heavy machinery and equipment involved in production process. This study examines the linkage among carbon emissions, export, gross domestic product, and urban population growth in South Africa. The study employs the Autoregressive Distributed Lag model to evaluate the linkage among outlined variables, using annual data from 1981 to 2021. The findings indicate that a 1% increase in urban population leads to 1% decrease in carbon emissions. Furthermore, a 1% increase in economic activities (GDP) leads to a rise in carbon emissions. This corroborates rising exports with GDP that is rising thereby resulting in carbon emissions. The study recommends platforms that educate the populace, especially the youth on the management of carbon emissions in their daily home and business activities should be encouraged. More investment into clean technologies should be provided for energy efficiency machinery, and more research into such activities should be pursued by all relevant stakeholders.

Sustainable electricity consumption in South Africa: the impacts of tourism and economic growth

The current study examines sustainable electricity consumption for economic growth in a small open and tourist economy. The energy-tourism nexus is evaluated for the relationship between sustainable electricity consumption and the international tourist arrival for the South African economy. The present study leverages on annual frequency data for South Africa from 1995 to 2019 for empirical analysis using the ARDL technique. Accordingly, empirical findings indicate a significant direct connection between the sustainable electricity consumption and the international tourism arrival; the study affirms that tourism-induced energy hypothesis is valid in South Africa. However, from a policy standpoint, alternative energy efficiency mechanisms such as renewable energy systems and emancipation of current energy management capabilities are recommended in South Africa. This is necessary for sustainable eco-friendly tourism that engenders clean energy consumption for the study area. More insights into policy caveats are presented in the concluding section.