Environmental Sustainability in Sub-Saharan Africa: the Case of Production and Consumption Activities

Environmental pollution studies are fast gathering momentum in trying to find a solution to the global climate change problem. However, while several causes of environmental degradation have been analysed in the past, the roles of production and consumption activities remain undiscussed. The identified literature gap informs the conduct of this panel analysis covering 31 sub-Saharan African (SSA) nations from 1996 to 2019, using the system of the generalised methods of moments as the estimation technique. Findings confirm that production activities are the main problem of environmental degradation in SSA while consumption activities have a beneficial but insignificant impact on the region's environment. Also, trade openness exerts a positive and significant effect on environmental degradation, while foreign direct investment reduces pollution. Thus, ensuing policies from the study provide the means to lower environmental degradation by focusing on domestic productive activities within the region. It is also imperative for the region to consider supporting production plants that are environmentally friendly while producing their tradable goods. As such, the region can then leverage the beneficial effects of foreign investment inflow and consumption to promote environmental sustainability.