Dynamic impacts of economic growth, energy use, urbanization, tourism, agricultural value-added, and forested area on carbon dioxide emissions in Brazil

Global climate change caused by greenhouse gases (GHGs), particularly carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, poses incomparable threats to human life, the environment, and development. The present study empirically investigates the dynamic impacts of economic growth, fossil fuel energy use, renewable energy use, urbanization, tourism, agricultural value-added, and forested area on CO₂ emissions in Brazil. Time series data from 1990 to 2019 were utilized by applying the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach followed by the dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) method. The DOLS estimate findings reveal that economic growth, fossil fuel energy use, urbanization, tourism, and agricultural value-added cause environmental degradation by increasing CO₂ emissions in Brazil while increasing renewable energy use and forested areas help to mitigate the CO₂ emissions in Brazil. The estimated results are robust to alternative estimators such as fully modified least squares (FMOLS) and canonical cointegrating regression (CCR). In addition, the pairwise Granger causality test is utilized to capture the causal linkage between the variables. This article put forward policy recommendations toward sustainable development by establishing strong regulatory policy instruments to mitigation of CO₂ emissions.