Second, with respect to economic governance, considerable improvements are equally
needed in the formulation and implementation of measures and mechanisms that deliver
public commodities, which
inter alia
: can reduce CO
2
emissions. For instance, availability of
a good public transport system can substantially limit the emission of greenhouse gases.
Hence, the government has to be more effective in the provision of public services that are of
quality, limitation of political pressures on civil servants, quality of regulations, effective
implementation of corresponding regulations and the relevance of credible governments in
overseeing the implementation of underlying regulations. Moreover, such policies should also
be tailored to favour competition in private sector development because such competition is
17
necessary to offer citizens with the best options for improving their livelihoods while at the
same time reducing their carbon footprints.
Third, on the front of institutional governance, in order for both domestic and foreign
stakeholders to have confidence in domestic institutions, both citizens and the governments of
sampled countries should respect institutions that govern interactions between them,
especially those pertaining to CO
2
emissions. Hence, both citizens and the governments
should be sanctioned in accordance with prescribed laws when they fail to respect rules and
regulations designed to limit CO
2
emissions. It follows that the rule of law and the control of
corruption should be strongly upheld.
It is important to note that the study is recommending that these governance measures
should be substantially increased in the sub-region because the unexpected findings could be
traceable to the inability of countries in SSA to gain from the time and level hypotheses
related to the favourable effects of good governance which, have been independently tested to
confirm the existence of a non-linear nexus between democracy and governance quality in
developing countries (Sung, 2004; Asongu, 2014). Concerning the level of democracy
hypothesis, it has been established that governance quality is highest in states where
democracy is strong, average in authoritarian states and least in partly democratised states
(Sung, 2004;
Back & Hadenius, 2008; Asongu & Nwachukwu, 2016e). The time of exposure
hypothesis maintains that young democracies have worse governance standards compared to
authoritarian regimes, unlike old democracies which are associated with the best governance
standards (Keefer, 2007). These level and time hypotheses are relevant to sub-Saharan Africa
because democracies in the sub-region are young and the advent to multiparty politics began
for the most part, only after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It follows that with time, when
governance standards are improved in the sub-region, they can be expected to increase
environmental quality by means of decreasing CO
2
emissions. Governments in sampled
countries can fast-track the process by implementing the recommended policies pertaining
political, economic and institutional governance.
