The Role of Demographic Transition, Technological Innovation on Environmental Degradation in the Congo Basin

Abstract

Ensuring Environmental sustainability as a means of stimulating growth remains an issue of great concern. In the past decades the environment has been deteriorating and almost every part of the planet has been touched. The main cause of environmental degradation is linked to humans’ activities such as agricultural intensification, population growth and energy consumption. Demographic transition entails many challenges as the population decreases due to a fall in birth rate and high dependency ratio, the technological progress usually improve health care and standard of living thereby increasing the life expectancies. The objective of this paper is therefore to investigate whether excess demography and technological innovation can explain the environmental degradation in the Countries that make up the Congo Basin. By applying the panel ARDL model (PMG), we realized that the demographic variables (Life Expectancy and depending ratio) negatively influence the environmental degradation. We equally found that technological innovation significantly reduces environmental emissions. However, the results do not support the hypothesis of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) for most of the countries except for Gabon and the Republic of Congo. Finally this region through policy implementation has to make greater efforts in controlling demographic change and new technologies that are environmentally friendly.