Population dynamics and climate change in Africa: Evidence from panel threshold regression

Abstract

Climate change has been mentioned as the crucial international threat in recent years. The analysis between population dynamics and climate change is not a simple linear analysis. This study investigates the threshold effect of population dynamics and climate change in 44 African countries. Empirically, this study measures population dynamics using total population, urban population and rural population on climate change. The paper initially tested the variables for unit root testing, and it was found that the results show that variables are integrated in both order I(0) and I(1). After, the paper confirmed that there is cointegration between population dynamics and climate change. The findings of the paper further demonstrated that the effect of population dynamics when using renewable energy as the threshold variable have a nonlinear effect on climate change. African countries must consider managing fast growing urban population to lower its destructive impact on climate change. This can be achieved by enhancing the living standards in rural population to avoid their migration to urban areas.