An environmental perspective of energy consumption, overpopulation, and human capital barriers in South Asia

Prior literature is substantive in highlighting the nexus between pollutant and socio-economic predictors; however, the role of human interaction has not been sufficiently explored. Thus, the present study examines the validity of the environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis in the presence of energy consumption, overpopulation, and human capital index in five South Asian countries. It employs fixed effects, random effects, and dynamic panel causality techniques with a set of panel data from 1972 to 2021. The baseline results validate the existence of the EKC hypothesis in the recipient panel. Nevertheless, the findings reveal that energy consumption and population density have positive effects, while human capital has negative impacts on CO2 emissions. Furthermore, the study observes that energy consumption and per capita GDP have a significant causal link with CO2 emissions, whereas CO2 emissions are evident to have causality with population density and human capital index. The results are robust and suggest that the consolidation of an effective regulatory framework and technological improvements are substantial measures to improve environmental quality in South Asia. Moreover, allocating sufficient resources to uplift contemporary educational and health status would be imperative to improving environmental quality as aspired to by the Paris Agreement.