Managing Environmental Quality in Sub-Saharan Africa: Does Institutional Quality Matter?

Climate change has been the most challenging environmental issue, which has attracted the attention of policymakers and researchers. The increasing concentration of carbon emissions in the atmosphere resulting in climate change has severe implications for development. Despite the global efforts to reduce carbon emissions, global carbon emissions have been increasing, and this conflicts with the Paris agreement on climate change. In this Chapter, we study the impact of institutional quality on carbon emissions using 45 sub-Saharan African countries between the period of 2000 and 2015. Our results indicated that institutions have a weak effect on mitigating carbon emissions. Interestingly, when we avoid the assumption of homogeneity in our sample and categorize our sample based on their institutional origin, our results revealed that institutions play a significant role in mitigating carbon emissions. We, therefore, argue that pursuing better institutions of governance are fundamental for achieving the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13.