This study explores the association between natural resources rent, industrial value addition, banking development, renewable energy consumption, total reserves and environmental quality in the dynamic context of BRICS nations from 1995 to 2019. BRICS economies are responsible for global greenhouse gas emissions and confront pressing environmental challenges, including biodiversity loss and pollution. For the dependent variable, the environmental quality, the study constructed a composite index using PCA for all environmental indicators where interdependencies among variables are prevalent. Besides this, the study incorporates two interaction terms to determine the indirect influence of natural resource rent and banking development on environmental quality through the mediating role of industrial value addition. By applying the CS-ARDL technique, the outcomes of the study reveal that natural resources rent, industrial value addition, and total reserves positively influence ENQ, indicating the adverse consequences of industrial sectors on environmental quality and continued environmental degradation due to resource-intensive industrial production, underscoring the urgency of sustainable resource management. In contrast, banking development and renewable energy consumption negatively influence ENQ, signifying the positive role of developed banking sectors in supporting eco-friendly projects and enhancing environmental quality. This study offers valuable insights for policy interventions to foster a more sustainable future.

This study examines the dynamic relationship between global value chain integration, and carbon emissions, in 57 developing economies from 2000 to 2018. Our results show a multipart link between GVC involvement and carbon emissions. Specifically, forward participation, which involves domestic content in foreign exports, offers the potential to reduce emissions, whereas backward participation, defined by foreign content in domestic exports, typically increases emissions. This imbalance draws attention to the dual nature of using mineral resources, which can contribute to and mitigate environmental damage depending on the extent of GVC engagement. The NARDL model employed in the study also reveals the dynamic and nonlinear responses of carbon emissions to variations in the utilization of mineral resources within GVCs. Our findings show that positive shocks to mineral resources use within GVCs negatively influence carbon emissions, while adverse shocks have less impact. The results have significant policy implications, indicating that developing nations should prioritize environmental sustainability while planning their GVC participation. This entails promoting value-added mining resource use initiatives and pushing for strict environmental regulations in GVCs. Our results also highlight the significance of implementing customized measures to mitigate economic activity\'s asymmetric and nonlinear impacts on environmental quality. It enlightens policymakers in developing nations on balancing environmental conservation and economic growth in a global economy that is becoming more interconnected.

As an innovative financial instrument, green credit is a new driving force for environmental governance. To study the impact of green credit on environmental quality, this paper uses the provincial panel data from 2007 to 2020 to construct a panel model for analysis based on the comprehensive environmental quality index. At the same time, it discusses the mechanism and regional heterogeneity of green credit affecting environmental quality. The results show that green credit significantly improves the overall quality of the environment, which has a significant effect on air quality and green quality but has no significant impact on water quality and soil quality. Green credit improves environmental quality by improving green technology innovation and promoting industrial structure upgrading. At the same time, there is obvious heterogeneity in the environmental effect of green credit. Among them, the environmental quality improvement effect of the eastern region and the carbon emission pilot area is more evident than that of the central and western regions and the non-carbon emission pilot area. This paper has important implications for promoting the development of green credit and giving full play to the environmental effects of green credit to achieve sustainable goals.

Carbon emissions have a negative impact on climate change. Environmental quality has faced significant challenges in the last decades. Eco-environmental quality helps assess the condition of the ecological environment to support humans\' civilization and development. By using emissions raster dataset, remote sensing images, and LULC data, this study explores the status of carbon emissions (CE), eco-environmental quality (RSEICs), and the dynamic relationship between both variables in Samarinda Metropolitan Area, Indonesia. This study uses the spatiotemporal approach to deepen the understanding of CE-RSEICs during 2000-2021. The methods include the analysis of CE and the principal component of RSEICs. To understand the CE-RSEICs spatial features, the directional distribution ellipse method is used. Also, this study performs CE-RSEICs coupling analysis and identifies its LULC type composition. The findings show that CE status is still on an increasing trend, concentrating in the eastern region and keeping expanding during the period. The location of the low-emission ellipse is in the southwest, while the high-emission ellipse is in the east and intersects with the core cities. The mean RSEICs value is between 0.2878 to 0.4223, which indicates that the eco-environmental quality is categorized as fairly poor to inferior. Greenness, wetness, and Csink have a positive impact on RSEICs. The very poor-class ellipse is located in the inland region, and the very good-class ellipse is in the coastal area. The CE-RSEICs coupling status shows that the majority of the area has a weaker coupling degree. However, the higher coupling degree is concentrated in the population center and built-up region, which is the settlement area. The dominance composition of settlement area in higher coupling degree shows that settlement area has an impact on increasing CE-RSEICs coupling degree. So, sustainable low carbon development in coastal metropolitan area must continue to be carried out by considering CE-RSEICs and its spatial aspects.

Energy poverty alleviation has emerged as a critical economic problem in recent years. Given the enormous number of people without essential energy services, a crucial concern is whether providing universal access to electrification will considerably affect environmental quality. The present research evaluates the asymmetric energy poverty-environmental quality nexus in South Asian economies. Previous works adopted panel data techniques, resulting in distinctive conclusions about the energy poverty-environmental quality nexus, irrespective of the truth that several nations could not establish such a correlation separately. This research, conversely, applies the Quantile-on-Quantile methodology, which enables independent determinations of time-series interconnection in all nations to offer worldwide yet economy-particular evidence concerning the relationship between the variables. The results indicate that energy poverty degrades environmental quality in most selected economies at particular data distribution quantiles. Moreover, the findings disclose that the ranks of asymmetries between the variables change by country, emphasizing the requirement of governments to take special care when accepting policies linked to energy poverty and environmental quality.

Regulatory agencies worldwide set pesticide environmental quality standards, which are proposed independently in each dependent environmental media rather than across the complete fate route. Thus, lacking the fate-pathway perspective in defining pesticide environmental quality standards might cause undesirable pesticide residue from the upper compartment (e.g., soil) to the lower compartment (e.g., water). This study aimed to harmonize the self-consistency of pesticide environmental quality standards across environmental media via the fate-pathway analysis. The introduced qualitative and quantitative rules defined environmental quality standards of pesticides in six major environmental scenarios in the soil and water system based on related regulatory objectives. Fate factors simulated via USEtox were used to create a preliminary quantitative link between theoretical maximum legal masses of pesticides across environmental compartments. Using chlorpyrifos and 2,4-D as examples, their standard values were comparatively assessed in selected environmental media in China and the United States. According to the investigative findings, missing the respective environmental quality standards of pesticides in the agricultural soil could significantly influence the implementation of those in freshwater. Taking a fate-pathway perspective, the self-consistency test highlighted that defining pesticide environmental quality standards for freshwater was the most challenging task, as the freshwater compartment typically comprises multiple lower environmental compartments with diverse regulatory objectives. Overall, this theoretical study has the potential to illuminate the harmonization of pesticide environmental quality standards throughout the entire environmental fate pathway, ultimately leading to improved regulatory efficiency and communication. Future research should focus on risk-based model implementation, regulatory response evaluation, and legal limit interpretation to better integrate environmental pesticide management under a variety of regulatory goals.

Rural tourism spurs economic growth and jobs but harms the Environment due to energy demands. The study accounts for energy use, globalization, and economic growth to assess and mitigate rural tourism\'s environmental impact. For data covering 2001Q1 to 2019Q4, GMM approaches are utilized to analyze the environmental implications of rural tourist enterprises. The findings suggest that rural tourism-related catering services increased substantial and positive overall environmental quality, except N2O. However, food and beverage services negatively influence greenhouse gas emissions and only PM2.5 in air pollution. Sightseeing hurts greenhouse gas emissions while having a positive impact on air pollution. Furthermore, traveling has a considerable negative influence on CO emissions in air pollutants. Energy use only has a substantial influence on CO2 and CO, but GDP has a negative impact on N2O emissions. Globalization has a negative impact on CO2 and air pollutants other than PM2.5. Catering services associated with rural tourism positively affect overall environmental quality, excluding N2O emissions. Rural tourism\'s food and beverage services harm greenhouse gas emissions (including CO2) and air pollution (particularly PM2.5). Traveling has a significant negative impact on CO emissions, but sightseeing has a dual impact, both negative on greenhouse gas emissions and positive influence on air pollution. Furthermore, shopping and leisure have little impact on overall environmental quality in China. The crucial efforts\' policy ramifications are addressed as well.

To date, a comprehensive analysis of urban green space (UGS) visitors\' emotional remains largely unexplored. In this study, we focus on how UGS environmental preferences, restorativeness, other physical factors (sound, air, and thermal environments), and individual characteristics affecting visitor emotions. Such a comprehensive analysis would allow relevant practitioners to check the environmental quality of UGSs and improve certain conditions to promote visitor emotions.
A total of 904 questionnaire responses with concurrently monitored physical factors were analyzed by independent sample t-tests, one-way ANOVA and path analysis.
The thermal evaluation had the largest impact on positive emotions (β = 0.474), followed by perceived restorativeness (β = 0.297), which had β values of -0.120 and -0.158, respectively, on negative emotions. Air evaluation was more effective for increasing positive emotions (β = 0.293) than reducing negative emotions (β = -0.115). Sound evaluation also had similar results (β = 0.330 vs. β = -0.080). Environmental preference significantly influenced only positive emotions (β = 0.181) but could still indirectly impact negative emotions. Moreover, objective physical factors can indirectly affect visitors\' emotions by enhancing their evaluations..
The influence of different UGS environmental factors on visitors\' emotions vary, as does their impacts on positive versus negative emotions. Positive emotions were generally more affected than negative emotions by UGS. Visitor emotions were mainly influenced by physical and psychological factors. Corresponding suggestions are proposed for UGS design and management in this study.

The main objective of this study is to examine the impacts of green energy and public investment on the CO2 emissions in North Africa. Moreover, the study also tests the existence of the N-shaped Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis for North African countries between 1995 and 2018. These factors were analyzed using the Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS), Fully Modified Ordinary Least Squares (FMOLS), and Pooled Mean Group (PMG) estimators to obtain estimations of heterogeneous parameters. The outcome of these tests and examinations showed that the N-shaped curve was confirmed. Secondly, The results of the study also demonstrate the effectiveness of renewable energy as an eco-friendly innovation in reducing carbon emissions. This finding highlights the positive impact that renewable energy sources can have in terms of emitting fewer carbon emissions compared to traditional energy sources. Moreover, public investment, which interprets government expenditure, and urbanization contribute to environmental degradation by increasing CO2 emissions in the case of North African countries. Furthermore, the findings also indicated a trade-off effect resulting from the correlation between CO2 emissions and economic development. Based on these findings, the study recommends that economic policymakers in North African countries prioritize transforming the structure of government expenditures to improve environmental quality, optimize the utilization of revenues from non-environmentally friendly energy resources to accelerate the energy transition, increase the exploitation of renewable energy, and promote environmental awareness in society. By implementing these recommendations, North African countries can balance economic growth and environmental quality while reducing their carbon footprint.

Global sustainable development demands boosting renewable energy and optimizing industrial structures. This study employs a panel vector autoregressive (PVAR) model to examine the dynamic relationship between energy structure, industrial structure, environmental quality, and urbanization in the BRICS countries from 1990 to 2021. Energy structure, industrial structure, environmental quality, and urbanization cointegrate empirically. Energy mix optimization and industrial structure upgrades can improve environmental quality. Energy enhancements also supported urbanization. Accelerating industrial change could adversely impact urbanization. The impulse response results demonstrate that expanding renewable energy and tertiary industries such as financial and service boost environmental quality and urbanization. The variance decomposition investigation reveals significant \"path dependence\" in reducing carbon emissions and increasing urbanization. Finally, based on the findings, policy insights for enhancing environmental quality and fostering urbanization are laid out and disputed, with long-term implications for environmental managers and urban planners.