Abstract: In recent times, industrialized economies have focused more on achieving a sustainable environment while maintaining economic prosperity. However, it is clear from the current research that natural resource exploitation and decentralization substantially affect environmental quality. To experimentally validate such data, the current study examines decentralized economies during the previous three decades (1990-2020). This study discovered the existence of long-term cointegration between carbon emissions, economic growth, revenue decentralization, spending decentralization, natural resources, and human capital using panel data econometric techniques. The findings are based on non-parametric techniques, indicating that economic growth and revenue decentralization are the primary barriers to meeting the COP26 objective. Human capital drives down carbon emissions and contributes to meeting the COP26 objective. On the contrary, decentralization of spending and natural resources has a mixed influence on carbon emissions across quantiles. This report recommends investing in human capital, education, and research & development to speed up COP26's target accomplishment.

第一作者：刘晓静，37266威尼斯官网教授，研究方向：生态经济学，生态审计、ESG。

该成果以“Resources curse hypothesis and COP26 target: Mineral and oil resources economies COVID-19 perspective”为题，2023年7月刊发于《RESOURCES POLICY》杂志（中科院1区，IF:10.2）。