The Human Well-being and Environmental Degradation Nexus in Africa

Abstract Environmental degradation continues to attract interest from academics, policymakers, and other stakeholders. However, empirical studies have been limited, particularly in the choice of human well-being indicators. Therefore, this study extends the literature by broadening the nexus between human well-being and environmental degradation in 29 African countries from 1970 to 2019. Preliminary tests adaptable to effects of cross-sectional dependency and heterogeneity in panel dataset were adopted, alongside the cross-sectional auto-regressive distributed lag model and the Dumitrescu-Hurlin causality approach. Findings from the study showed that the adopted human well-being indicators such as globalisation, life expectancy and human capital development were environmentally enhancing both in the short and long term. In contrast, growth in income was found to be environmentally degrading in the short and long term. At the same time, urbanisation was only environmentally detrimental in the long term with no significant short-term effect. Natural resource rent which served as a control variable, was environmentally degrading both in the short and long term. Also, a bidirectional association between human well-being and environmental degradation was confirmed. Consequently, this study implies a win-win symbiotic nexus between the environment and human well-being in African countries.