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The purpose of the paper is to illustrate application of the cleaner production concept so as to incorporate environmental protection into business performance. The study analyses areas pertaining to the foundry industry that impact negatively on the environment leading to unsustainable resource utilisation and suggests options for promoting sustainable development within the industry, with specific focus on a foundry in a lower income country (LIC).

Data were collected using the cleaner production (CP) Methodology. Pre‐assessment and assessment was carried out and options generated. The options included both low cost and capital intensive approaches.

The paper finds that the CP approach adopted provides clear guidance for generating options and can be used as a practical basis for managerial decision making and policy formulation. Of major concern is resource depletion and pollution associated with the foundry processes. Used resin sand contains toxic chemicals cause leaching and as such, reclamation of resin sand is suggested. There is need for low income countries (LIC's) to identify the best available technologies (BAT's) that are available within the foundry industry and take these aboard or better still improve on them.

This research developed environmental options that can be applied in the foundry industry. However, it can be said that the findings may have limited global application since the analysis was carried out at one Foundry Company.

The paper focuses on a single foundry factory, since the case study approach was used. As such, environmental indicators and options may vary, since the processes from one foundry to another are bound to differ.

This paper is an attempt at combining theoretical and practical ideas to cover the scope of sustainable manufacturing in the setting of a developing country with a view to identify the lessons that can be learnt and to identify the points of departure when compared with studies done elsewhere. The work informs cleaner production assessment at any level, with a focus of production experiences in the foundry industry in a lower technology, developing economy that is less industrialized. The paper establishes a framework of options that can be applied in the foundry industry and other pollution‐intensive industries.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of three strategic environmental options on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Namely, we examine the effects of pollution prevention and waste management (PPWM) practices, green supply chain (GSC) practices, and outsourcing on reducing local and supply chain GHG emissions.

Using ASSET4 and deploying first-differencing fixed-effects panel data models, the study conducts a large-scale empirical examination on the effects of these focal strategic environmental options on GHG emissions.

This study finds that PPWM practices reduce local GHG emissions and that GSC practices reduce supply chain GHG emissions. The results also show that outsourcing does not reduce local GHG emissions and has an adverse effect on supply chain GHG emissions.

The study findings indicate that environmental practices are effective in reducing GHG emissions. However, they are effective only in their corresponding domain. Further, outsourcing is not a viable strategic option, and managers should be mindful of its undesired environmental consequences.

Firms undertake strategic environmental options, such as implementing environmental practices and reallocating production activities, to improve their environmental performance. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of these options on reducing GHG emissions has not been thoroughly examined.

There is great conflict between some developed countries and developing countries regarding attitudes toward reducing global warming (e.g. the USA vs China). The aim of this paper is to argue that open trade doesn't necessarily increase world pollution if clean development mechanism (CDM) is generously undertaken and if the CDM devotes considerable real resources in transfers of the associate abatement technology.

The impacts of trade on environment can be decomposed into scale, technique and composition effects. This paper incorporates abatement assets into Copeland and Taylor's model to argue that the technique effect stems from an increasing in pollution taxes and in international diffusion of abatement technology; however, the former is fully offset but the latter is facilitated by the CDM.

While world pollution is jointly determined by the composition and technique effects, in contrast to literature, open trade doesn't necessarily increase world pollution if CDM is generously undertaken with considerable real resources in abatement technology transfers.

Currently, there are more than about one half of the CDM projects that allocate no real resources in technology transfers. This study addresses how voluntary investment of the CDM from the North (e.g. the USA) to the South (e.g. China) might reduce pollution on a global level only if having “generously” technology transfer.

This study aims to examine the relationship between foreign finance, economic growth and CO₂ to investigate if the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) exists as an empirical evidence in 32 selected Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

This study used quantitative analysis to test two main hypotheses: H1 is the U-shape relationship between foreign finance and environment, and H2 is the N-shaped association between economic growth and environment. In doing so, this study used panel data techniques. The panel set contained 32 countries over the period from 1990 to 2015, with 27 observations for each country. This study applied a panel OLS estimator via fixed-effects control to address heterogeneity and mitigate endogeneity. Generalized method of moments (GMM) with fixed effects-instrumental variables (FE-IV) and diagnostic tests were also used.

The results showed that foreign finance and environmental quality have an inverted U-shaped association. The three proxies’ foreign investment, foreign assets and remittance in the first stages contribute significantly to CO₂ emissions, but after the threshold point is reached, these proxies become “environmentally friendly” by their contribution to reducing CO₂ emissions. Also, a non-linear relationship denotes that foreign investment in OECD countries enhances the importance, as a proxy of foreign finance has greater environmental quality than foreign assets. Additionally, empirical results show that remittances received is linked to the highest polluted levels until a threshold point is reached, at which point it then helps reduce CO₂ emissions. The GMM and FE-IV results provide robust evidence on inverse U-shaped relationship, while the N-shaped relationship explains that economic growth produces more CO₂ emissions at the first phase of growth, but the quadratic term confirms this effect is negative after a specific level of GDP is reached. Then, this economic growth makes the environment deteriorate. These results are robust even after controlling for the omitted variable issue. The IV-FE results indicate an N-shaped relationship in the OECD countries.

Most studies have used different economic indicators as proxies to show the effects of these indicators on the environment, but they are flawed and outdated regarding the large social challenges facing contemporary, socio-financial economic systems. To overcome these disadvantages, the social, institutional and environmental aspects of economic development should also be considered. Hence, this study aims to explain this issue as a relationship with several proxies in regard to environmental, foreign finance and economic aspects.

This paper uses updated data sets for analyzing the relationship between foreign finance and economic growth as a new proxy for pollution. Also, this study simulates the financial and environmental future to show their effect on investments in different OECD countries. While this study enhances the literature by establishing an innovative control during analysis, this will increase to add value. This study is among the few studies that empirically investigate the non-linear relationship between finance and environmental degradation.

The Kingdom of Bahrain has had tremendous development in various areas in the last decade. As a result of this, increasing energy consumption in Bahrain puts a strain on the country's energy supplies and increased CO₂ emissions. This study investigates the determinants of carbon emissions in Bahrain.

This study employs the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds test and vector error correction model (VECM) Granger causality cointegration methods for empirical analysis during 1980-2020. The unit root test and residual diagnosis have been applied to see the stationarity and normality of the model.

The analysis suggests no short run causality amid carbon emission, international trade, capital formation, economic development and energy consumption, but a long-run association jointly exist from the exogenous variables toward endogenous variables. The results of the study also revealed that trade and economic growth in Bahrain react negatively to environmental deterioration.

This research study’s outcome will help the policymakers to build sound external and environmental policies to sustain economic growth and suggested policymakers to emphasize on sustainable usage of energy, alternatives of energy supply, and creation of renewable energy to mitigate the impact of CO₂ emission.

The alternatives of energy supply and creation of renewable energy can positively influence the socio-economic state of the nation, like new job opportunities, revenue generation.

This study is unique as no other study till now has covered this period. The findings are also different as the past studies found short-run causality with the control variables, but the study found a long-run causality jointly.

To construct an index (index of environmental sensitivity performance) to be used in a cross‐country trade model in order to analyze the effect of various degrees of environmental stringency on the trade patterns, and especially on the export performance of the countries.

The gravity model of trade is used in order to find the effects of environmental stringency on the variation in trade flows.

The study shows that environmental stringency has an important impact on the export of the countries. The impact of the degree of environmental stringency on the exports is significantly negative suggesting an inverse relationship between export values and relative environmental sensitivity performance of the nations.

This study supports the argument that the environmental stringency level differential between developing and developed nations is a crucial criteria in terms of explaining shifts in the trade patterns and international specialization of the countries.

This paper aims to, under the framework of the pollution haven hypothesis (PHH), test the theory that foreign direct investment (FDI) creates an intra-host country pollution haven in developing nations by studying the contemporary case of China.

This empirical analysis has used a panel dataset of 30 provinces that was analyzed for the period of 1997-2011. An Oaxaca decomposition was also implemented to examine the effects of environmental stringency on regional pollution.

The estimates indicate that openness to FDI generally appears to be good for the environment. The results of estimation show that the western region of China has developed a potential “comparative advantage” in pollution-intensive industries, thanks to the strong incentive of economic expansion. However, further estimates concerning the location decisions of FDI suggest that the providers of FDI still prefer to locate in the coastal regions of China, where a tighter environmental regulation policy has been imposed. The findings suggest that the better infrastructure and technology spillover of environmental policy-making might be more attractive to FDI than comparatively weak environmental stringency.

This study applies a model advanced in previous theoretical literature which divides the effects of trade into the categories of scale, technique and composition. It also contributes to the understanding of the PHH in the context of intra-host country analysis.

It is essential to track the development of resource and pollution intensive industries such as textile, leather, pharmaceutical, etc., under burgeoning pressure of environmental compliance. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the progress of Indian leather industry in terms of individual factors and total factor productivity.

This study applies and examines the various concepts of productivity such as labor productivity, capital productivity, material productivity and energy productivity. Further, it assesses and compares the performance of Indian leather industry in Tamil Nadu (TN), West Bengal (WB) and Uttar Pradesh (UP) based on productivity analysis, spatial variations determinants in productivity and technology closeness ratio.

The findings suggest that as per the productivity analysis, WB leather clusters have performed remarkably better in terms of partial factor productivity and technical efficiency (TE), followed by TN and UP. This can be attributed to shifting of leather cluster of WB to a state-of art leather complex with many avenues for resource conservation. Further, the findings reveal that the firm size and partial factor productivities have significant positive correlation with TE which supports technological theory of the firm.

The results of this study can be useful for the policy makers associated with the Indian leather industry especially to design interventions to support capacity building at individual firm level as well as cluster level to enhance the efficiency and productivity of overall industry.

The findings also support the resource dependence theory of firm according to which the larger size firms should reflect on resource conservation practices, for instance the concept of prevention is better than cure based upon 3R (reduce, recycle and reuse) principles.

The paper gives an explanation of the productivity in the leather industry in terms of its factor productivity and TE.

This paper aims to clarify the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and carbon intensity. This study uses the dynamic panel data model to study and provide fresh evidence for the issue.

This study first uses the dynamic panel data model to consider the endogeneity problem, and applies a system-generalized method of moments estimator to study the effect of FDI on carbon intensity using the panel data of 188 countries during 1990-2013.

The result shows that FDI has a significant negative impact on carbon intensity of the host country. After considering the other factors, including share of fossil fuels, industrial intensity, urbanization level and trade openness, the impact of FDI on carbon intensity is still significantly positive. In addition, FDI also has a significant negative impact on carbon intensity of high-income countries and middle- and low-income countries.

This paper offers two contributions to the literature on the effect of FDI on carbon intensity. From a methodological perspective, this paper is the first to apply a dynamic panel data model to study the effect of FDI on carbon intensity using worldwide panel data. Second, this paper is the first to analyze the effect of FDI on carbon intensity in different countries with different income levels separately.

This study investigates the relationship between economic growth, international trade, and environmental degradation in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), focusing on the validity of the environmental Kuznets hypothesis (EKC), the pollution havens hypothesis (PHH), and the factor endowment hypothesis (FEH).

The study uses annual data for 41 SSA countries between 1990 and 2017 and employs the bias-corrected least square dummy variable (LSDVC) estimation techniques. Environmental degradation is indicated by carbon dioxide (CO₂), delicate particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions, and deforestation.

The results confirm the validity of the EKC hypothesis for PM2.5 emissions and deforestation but not for CO₂ emissions. The results also indicate that international trade reduces deforestation and that both the PHH and FEH are valid for CO₂ emission but not for PM2.5 emissions and deforestation.

In this paper, the authors are able to illustrate that both economic growth and international trade can harm the environment if unchecked. Therefore, the conclusion of this study offers policy options through which SSA countries can achieve desired economic growth goals without affecting environmental quality. The study can be a benchmark for environmental policy in the region.

The authors provide an in-depth discussion of the growth-trade-environmental degradation nexus in SSA. The EKC, PHH, and FEH’s validity confirm that economic growth remains a threat to the local natural environment in SSA. Hence, the need for a trade-off between economic growth needs and environmental degradation and understanding where to compromise to achieve SSA's economic development priorities.