Resources Policy最新文献

The trend in copper trade raises significant concerns regarding global mineral resource sustainability. This study investigates how sustainable education impacts copper trade in China, analyzing data from 1990 to 2021. Findings reveal that a 1% increase in the Sustainable Development Index leads to a reduction in copper trade: exports decrease by 0.14%–0.27% and imports by 0.35%–0.57%, highlighting the negative influence of sustainable education on trade. GDP growth positively affects copper trade, while the official exchange rate impacts exports and imports differently due to currency fluctuations. Urbanization boosts both exports and imports, driven by infrastructure expansion. Additionally, loans to the private sector specifically enhance copper imports. To foster sustainable copper trade, China should invest in sustainable education, promote gender equality in education, encourage green economic growth, implement an effective carbon tax, and provide green loans for the copper sector.

Addressing the challenge of integrating quantitative risk data with qualitative behavioral risk information in coal mine safety production, this study, taking gas risk as an example, proposes a BN-ELM (Bayesian Network-Extreme Learning Machine) prediction and early warning method that incorporates behavioral information. By uniformly quantifying behavioral risks and gas data, optimizing model parameters, and integrating control chart technology, this method constructs a coal mine safety situation awareness model. Experimental results demonstrate that this approach significantly reduces prediction errors in gas data (by 0.007), risk values (by 0.01), and safety situation values (by 0.03). This study innovatively considers behavioral risk factors, providing coal mine enterprises with efficient risk management methods and practical tools.

This study investigates the impact of fintech on economic development, energy transition and environmental well-being in OECD nations from 2005 to 2018 by utilizing MM-QR and CS-ARDL methods. Results reveal the different degree of positive impact of fintech on the said variables. In this regard, fintech plays a key role in planning, development and management of financial institutions and enhancing economic growth and development in the region across all the quantiles. Moreover, energy transition and green energy management get influence positively through technological involvement in the financial system. Lastly, the relationship between fintech and environment is moderately positive in the beginning and gets stronger in higher quantiles. Fintech facilitates environmental policy stringency, green finance and channelization of various financial sources towards environment well-being. It also effectively integrates economy, energy and environment towards attainment of sustainable development goal-7 (ensure affordable and clean energy), goal-8 (economic growth and development) and goal −13 (Climate challenges, concerns and action) and objectives of COP27 and 28. In light with the findings, several policy implications are suggested.

Our study focused on analyzing copper resource consumption and its decoupling from economic development in the top 25 consuming countries, using LMDI and Tapio methods. Results revealed a shift among developed nations towards strong decoupling, whereas most developing countries exhibited weak decoupling. Income effects counteracted decoupling, while intensity effects played a significant role, particularly in driving strong decoupling in developed nations. These findings underscore the importance of sustainable national environmental policies, especially for developing countries, where attention to structural effects on economic development and green growth is crucial. Developed nations should prioritize monitoring intensity effects, supporting technological advancements, and improving resource efficiency. Developing countries should pay more attention to structural effects, formulate diversified development strategies, and give full play to the role of natural resource utilization in economic structural transformation.

The necessity of government intervention, particularly through public spending, to address market failure in providing public goods like environmental quality is widely recognized. However, the effectiveness of fiscal environmental policies in improving the environment remains unclear. This paper aims to explore the impact of funding sources for government expenditures on environmental quality. Using a Ramsey growth model, we investigate the consequences of two alternative funding sources for environmental protection: Taxes and natural resources rents. The model highlights that along the balanced growth path, financing environmental spending through taxes enhances environmental quality, while funding from natural resources rents leads to its deterioration. Furthermore, the model emphasizes the crucial role of socio-political institutions governing the economy in understanding the link between environmental protection expenditures and environmental outcomes. To test the model's propositions, we utilize a panel dataset of 76 countries spanning from 1995 to 2018. Our empirical findings corroborate the notion that the funding sources of environmental protection expenditures significantly impact environmental outcomes. Additionally, the results indicate that higher institutional quality, such as greater state capacity, enhances the effectiveness of the government's environmental spending in improving environmental quality. Our findings offer valuable insights for policymakers and researchers seeking to design effective strategies for environmental preservation and sustainable growth.

With the increasing resource and environmental constraints and pollution, China urgently needs to improve the condition of resource utilization. Digital technology innovation is a powerful tool for resource optimization. Therefore, this paper explores the impact of digital technology innovation on natural resource utilization efficiency (NRUE) in China from 2006 to 2019 with the system-generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM). Besides, we investigate the mechanism and heterogeneity. The main conclusions show that: (1) Digital technology innovation can significantly improve NRUE. Every 1% rise in digital technology innovation causes a 0.024% increase in NRUE; (2) digital technology innovation can indirectly improve NRUE by promoting industrial structure optimization, strengthening pollution control, and promoting green credit; and (3) heterogeneity exists in the digital technology innovation-NRUE nexus, and the effects are more obvious in digital product manufacturing and northern China. The findings enrich the existing literature and provide enlightenment for the use of digital technology to improve NRUE in China.

Every mining activity shows a footprint on the territory. The signs left by mining operations are physical, such as tunnels, extractive waste facilities, dressing plants, but also economic and social, due to job placement, income and knowledge connected to mining activity sensu lato. In the extraordinary context of the Germanasca Valley, mining has coexisted for hundreds of years with the mountain environment of the Alps and with the local population, and has become a fundamental part of local development, intimately connected with the territory and the local economic and social fabrics.

The progressive migration of mining crops at lower altitudes has left behind old mining structures that here, more than elsewhere, guaranteed new forms of industrial and geo-tourism. Similarly, the technological advance and the evolution of mining production, towards a higher quality product, with a consequent reduction in the quantities exploited, led over time to a progressive reduction in the number of employed miners. The resilience of the local population, however, balanced the contraction of work in the mine, transforming former miners in tourist guides and increasing the induced activities, passing from the previous “in house” model to an “outsourcing” model, characterized by external management of mine-related activities. The transformation of old mines into museums has certainly contributed to the development of the area, particularly considering a slow tourism that shows scarce attitude to a “fast and junk” tourism. The challenge is to understand if and how geotourism influence, in specific mining areas (such as Germanasca Valley), the attractiveness of a place.

Aiming to provide insights for nations improving their natural resources management and facilitate smooth energy transition, this study investigates green productivity across 38 OECD countries by employing by-production technology, directional distance functions, data envelopment analysis, and the Luenberger-Hicks-Moorsteen (LHM) productivity indicator. The analysis includes a comparative examination of the LHM productivity indicator and its components, along with an exploration of the relationship between LHM indicator and the structure of renewable energy consumption. The main discoveries can be succinctly summarized as follows: Firstly, the LHM productivity indicator highlights growth driven primarily by technical progress (TP), despite impediments posed by changes in technical efficiency change (TEC) and scale efficiency change (SEC). Secondly, many countries have demonstrated successful attainment of positive green growth, with outstanding performances observed in Ireland and Latvia. Conversely, Turkey, Costa Rica, and Iceland exhibit relative shortcomings in terms of sustainability. Over time, there is a discernible widening gap in green productivity among countries, with improvements in TP being a major contributing factor to the growth of the LHM indicator in most nations. Thirdly, the study reveals that the consumption structure of renewable energy has a positive impact on the LHM indicator. Lastly, the transition towards sustainable energy yields a significant positive effect on smaller nations and those with lower per capita carbon dioxide emissions. This nuanced comprehension of the link between green productivity and the structures of renewable energy consumption provides valuable insights to the discourse on sustainable development and resource reallocation.

This paper examines the impact of the coal sector on the economy from the perspective of industry shocks. Existing research primarily focuses on the relationship between coal consumption and the economy. An 8-sector dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model is constructed, based on China's input-output tables from 2005 to 2020, to depict the economic effects of coal sector shocks. The research findings are: (1) The DSGE model reveals a close connection between the coal industry and the macroeconomy. (2) The coal sector shocks have the largest impact on the electricity sector. (3) Coal sector shocks primarily affect the macroeconomy through non-energy manufacturing sectors. (4) As the economic development level increases, the influence of coal sector shocks on the macroeconomy gradually diminishes. The econometric analysis indicates that the role of coal is no longer significant in the high stage of economic development. The results of the panel quantile regression model also show the same result. Based on these conclusions, this paper suggests that as China gradually enters a new stage of development, it can gradually reduce coal consumption.