Does women's political empowerment matter for improving the environment? A heterogeneous dynamic panel analysis

According to the UN Agenda 21 in 1992, women were regarded as a very important part in achieving sustainable development. In this agenda, participation, equality, and empowerment for females were emphasized as bases for sustainable development. In this paper, we make an attempt to explore the relationship between women's political empowerment (WPE) and CO2 emissions. To that end, we apply panel‐cointegration techniques to investigate both long‐term and short‐term effects of WPE on the environment in 72 countries during 1971–2012. The results from the pooled mean group (PMG) estimator indicate that, in the long run, CO2 emissions decrease by about 11.51 percent points in response to a one‐unit increase in the index of WPE after controlling for a variety of other factors. However, the short‐term estimated coefficient of WPE is statistically insignificant. Moreover, further study shows that women's civil society participation has the largest effect, followed by political participation. Another noteworthy result is the effect of energy intensity. We find that both the long‐term and short‐term estimated coefficient of energy intensity are positive and highly statistically significant, but the magnitude of the short‐term estimated coefficient is lower than the long‐term one. This comparison suggests that the influence of energy intensity on CO2 emissions would usually take some time to materialize fully. From a policy perspective, our estimation results suggest that improving the status of women worldwide, especially in the developing countries, can reduce CO2 emissions.