Africa currently faces extreme poverty while simultaneously grappling with the dual challenges of explosive population growth and mounting pressure to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. However, the underlying causes of CO 2 emissions in Africa and their driving factors remain poorly understood, hindering the formulation and implementation of policies to reduce CO 2 emissions and promote sustainable development. This study addresses this gap by investigating the spatiotemporal characteristics and drivers of CO 2 emissions in 30 African countries from 1980 to 2021. The drivers related to efficiency and technological change, with and without heterogeneity, were captured using log( t ) convergence, production-theoretical decomposition analysis, and meta-frontier production-theoretical decomposition analysis, respectively. The results revealed a convergence trend in CO 2 emissions for the selected African countries, excluding Morocco. Furthermore, population size is the primary driver of CO 2 emissions, accounting for approximately 62.72% of the growth in CO 2 emissions during the period 2001–2021. At the same time, technological advancements and energy efficiency improvements reduce CO 2 emissions in Africa. Moreover, the technical efficiency and technical change effects of energy use within groups significantly mitigate CO 2 emissions growth, with varying impacts across regions. This study highlights the importance of considering regional spatiotemporal differences, particularly those related to energy efficiency and technology, and proposes targeted policy recommendations to promote the sustainable development of the entire continent.
To address the systemic complexity and uncertainty risks associated with urbanization, this study develops a spatiotemporal dynamic evaluation model of urban resilience based on a three-dimensional “environment–service–connectivity” framework. Taking Beijing as a case study, the model integrates entropy-weighted TOPSIS, coupling coordination analysis, geographic detection, and geographically weighted regression to systematically reveal the spatiotemporal characteristics of urban resilience, the coupling mechanisms among its dimensions, and the spatial heterogeneity of influencing factors for 2010, 2015, and 2020. The results indicate that: (1) overall urban resilience in Beijing continuously improved over the study period, exhibiting a spatial pattern of higher resilience in central and southeastern areas and lower resilience in northern and southwestern regions; (2) the coupling coordination among the environmental, service, and connectivity dimensions gradually improved but remained at an early coordination stage, with three typical regional types identified: “high resilience–basic coordination”, “high resilience–basically uncoordinated”, and “low resilience–extremely uncoordinated”; (3) service facility diversity was identified as the dominant factor driving resilience enhancement, while the effects of other factors showed significant spatial heterogeneity. Specifically, resilience in the western ecological conservation areas was mainly driven by the proportion of cultivated and forested land, in northern regions by the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), in north-central areas by road network density, and in central and southern regions by proximity to medical facilities. This study demonstrates that the proposed model can effectively identify resilience gaps at the grid-cell level, providing a scientific basis for targeted spatial governance and differentiated strategies to enhance urban resilience in Beijing.
Enhancing green development and safety resilience is a critical pathway toward sustainable development. Drawing on panel data from the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, and Pearl River Delta urban agglomerations, this study constructs an urban safety resilience indicator system and employs the non-radial directional distance function to measure green development efficiency. By integrating multiple analytical models, including the coupling coordination degree, panel vector autoregression, and Haken models, it quantifies the interaction between green development and safety resilience and explores the mechanisms underlying their synergistic evolution. The findings show that the three regions generally evolved toward moderate or high levels of coordination, with core cities leading this transition. Impulse response analysis reveals that safety resilience exerts a sustained positive effect on green development, whereas green development can impose a short-term constraint on improving safety resilience. The Haken model identifies safety resilience as the order parameter, with a potential barrier of 0.623 6. By 2022, Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen had overcome this barrier and achieved high-order synergy, while the other cities remained in low-order states awaiting phase transition. Based on distances to the potential barrier, the study proposes tailored governance strategies for the advanced, emergent, fragile, and defective synergy categories, and advocates distinct pathways and potential energy transfer mechanisms, such as cross-regional carbon compensation and resilience resource sharing.
Environmental regulation (ER) refers to various measures taken to address the negative externalities caused by socio-economic activities that are considered effective means to enhance the green total factor productivity (GTFP). However, existing research on whether this conclusion applies to urban agglomeration remains insufficient. Constrained by resource endowments and environmental conditions, the urban agglomeration in the Yellow River Basin of China has long faced multiple pressures concerning economic and social development, environmental improvement, and carbon reduction. Therefore, this study selects the area to verify whether ER can improve the GTFP in urban agglomerations. The study reveals that: (1) the GTFP of the urban agglomeration in the Yellow River Basin of China has shown a fluctuating upward trend; (2) ER effectively enhances the GTFP of this region, with technological innovation and human capital playing intermediary roles; and (3) ER exhibits spatial spillover effects, which has a significant positive impact on GTFP of local cities, as well as in surrounding cities. These findings elucidate how ER influences the GTFP and aids the formulation of effective environmental policies. The study provides a research foundation for the sustainable development of urban agglomeration and serves as a case study for similar regions worldwide.
Africa currently faces extreme poverty while simultaneously grappling with the dual challenges of explosive population growth and mounting pressure to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. However, the underlying causes of CO2 emissions in Africa and their driving factors remain poorly understood, hindering the formulation and implementation of policies to reduce CO2 emissions and promote sustainable development. This study addresses this gap by investigating the spatiotemporal characteristics and drivers of CO2 emissions in 30 African countries from 1980 to 2021. The drivers related to efficiency and technological change, with and without heterogeneity, were captured using log(t) convergence, production-theoretical decomposition analysis, and meta-frontier production-theoretical decomposition analysis, respectively. The results revealed a convergence trend in CO2 emissions for the selected African countries, excluding Morocco. Furthermore, population size is the primary driver of CO2 emissions, accounting for approximately 62.72% of the growth in CO2 emissions during the period 2001–2021. At the same time, technological advancements and energy efficiency improvements reduce CO2 emissions in Africa. Moreover, the technical efficiency and technical change effects of energy use within groups significantly mitigate CO2 emissions growth, with varying impacts across regions. This study highlights the importance of considering regional spatiotemporal differences, particularly those related to energy efficiency and technology, and proposes targeted policy recommendations to promote the sustainable development of the entire continent.
