How natural disasters affect carbon emissions: the global case

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has once again made the impacts of natural disasters a hot topic in academia. The environmental impacts of natural disasters, however, remain unsettled in the existing literature. This study aims to investigate the impact of natural disasters on CO2 emissions. For this purpose, we employ a panel dataset covering 138 countries over the period 1990–2018 and two dynamic panel estimation methods. Then, considering the differences in CO2 emissions across various countries, we run a panel quantile regression to examine the asymmetry in the nexus between natural disasters and CO2 emissions. We also discuss the mediating effects of energy consumption between natural disasters and CO2 emissions. After conducting a series of robustness checks, we confirm that our results are stable and convincing. The empirical results indicate that natural disasters significantly reduce CO2 emissions. Nevertheless, the impact of natural disasters on CO2 emissions is asymmetric across different quantiles of CO2 emissions. Furthermore, the technology level serves as an important moderating factor between natural disasters and CO2 emissions. The mediating effect results reveal that natural disasters not only directly reduce CO2 emissions but also indirectly promote carbon reduction by restraining energy consumption. Finally, several policy implications are provided to reduce CO2 emissions and the damage caused by natural disasters.