THE INTER-RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEFORESTATION, CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS AND INCOME POVERTY: EVIDENCE FROM SUDAN (2000-2021)

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the inter-relationship between environmental degradation and income poverty, implies time series data for Sudan published on the World Bank-World Development Indicators Database, covering the period 2000-2021. A recursive model made up of three behavioral equations has been built and used as a means of analyzing the data, the functional equations expressed deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions as facets of environmental degradation and income poverty from an economic perspective. The results reveal that deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions are positively related to the incidence of poverty, likewise poor people found to be environmental degrader. Moreover, increasing in per capita gross domestic product lead to higher rates of both deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions. Nonetheless, increasing in per capita gross domestic product is not sufficient means to reduce income poverty. The negative association between deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions stem from the direct link between agriculture expansion into forest area, and increasing in energy use simply increasing emissions. The study concludes environmental degradation and poverty are inter-related in the sense that both are causally related and hence explainable in the light of macro-socio economic variables such as per capita gross domestic product and energy use.

Keyword: Carbon dioxide emissions, Deforestation, Environmental degradation, Income poverty, Sudan.