Impact of climate change on economic growth in developing countries: unravelling the moderating role of globalization

Though some empirical works have shown the determinants of economic growth, the research work on the impact of climate change (proxied by carbon emissions and ecological footprint) on economic growth is still scanty especially in developing countries. The attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG-8 and SDG-13) requires a comprehensive analysis of the nexus between climate change and economic growth. Therefore, this study fills the literature gap by investigating the impact of climate change on economic growth in Malaysia (a country that obtains most of her energy from fossil fuels) and Nigeria (a country that obtains most of her energy from renewable resources) during the 1980–2021 period. Given the intricate relationship among climate change, economic growth and globalization, this study also determines the moderating role of globalization (and its dimensions) on the impact of climate change on economic growth. It employs the Autoregressive Distributed Lag approach to estimate the parameters. The linear model shows that climate change has a negative impact on economic growth in Malaysia and Nigeria albeit the magnitude is larger in Malaysia. The interaction model indicates that globalization and some of its dimensions favorably moderate the detrimental impact of carbon emissions on economic growth but cannot moderate the impact of ecological footprint on economic growth in Malaysia and Nigeria. The marginal effect of carbon emissions on economic growth varies with the level of globalization. This study highlights the implications of the findings and proposes some policy options.