Title: The eco-environmental costs of conflicts

Authors: Sherif Maher Hassan

Addresses: M&S Research Hub, Carlo Mierendorff Str 43, 34132 Kassel, Germany; Faculty of Commerce, Suez Canal University, Ring road, Ismailia, Egypt; ERF, Dokki, Cairo, Egypt; American University in Cairo, New Cairo, Cairo, Egypt

Abstract: The environmental costs of conflicts remain disputed; while their negative effects are conclusive, they are not adequately quantified or addressed. This study aims to quantify the direct air-polluting effects of armed conflicts across 48 global hot spots from 2000 to 2020. Our main variables of interest are the intensity and type of conflict, representing four types of conflict, intrastate, interstate, systematic, and international armed conflicts. To proxy the extent of air pollution, we use carbon dioxide emissions (metric tons per capita) as our dependent variable. We estimate our model using fixed effects (FE) with Driscoll-Kraay errors and two-stage least square (2SLS) methodologies. Our results confirm the air-polluting effects of armed conflicts, while the intrastate type of conflicts tends to have stronger air-polluting effects than international ones.

Keywords: conflict; CO₂ emissions; two-stage least square; 2SLS; environment.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGE.2023.131329

International Journal of Green Economics, 2023 Vol.17 No.1, pp.36 - 49

Received: 11 Oct 2022
Accepted: 24 Nov 2022
Published online: 06 Jun 2023 *

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