Modeling the nexus between carbon emissions, urbanization, population growth, energy consumption, and economic development in Asia: Evidence from grey relational analysis

Environmental degradation has been identified as a major worldwide concern in recent decades, with CO2 emissions considered as one of the primary drivers of this catastrophe. This study creatively analyzes the underlying impact of urbanization, population growth, Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, energy use on CO2 emissions to mitigate the environmental degradation from the five most populated regions of Asia i.e., China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. To investigate the integrated impact of CO2 emission and associated factors, a grey relational analysis (GRA) based weights and ranking were estimated for the year 2001 to 2014. Then, utilizing the Conservative minimax approach, we sought to determine which country contributes the most to CO2 emissions based on weights acquired by Second Synthetic Grey Relational Analysis (SSGRA). The Grey technique for order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (G-TOPSIS) technique was employed for further optimization by prioritizing the explanatory factors that have the greatest influence on CO2 emissions. The outcomes through GRA techniques discovered that India is a major contributor of carbon emission caused by population growth and economic development. Whereas the use of energy and urbanization are grounded factors of emission for China and Pakistan respectively. The outcomes of the Conservative minimax criterion indicate that India is a leading contributor to carbon emissions in Asia. Also, the unsustainable growth of population and CO2 emissions indicates a direct causative relationship for environmental damage based on the G-TOPSIS. The findings of the study potentially aid governments and policymakers in making better decisions and investments to mitigate CO2 emissions while fostering a more environmentally friendly atmosphere.(c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).