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 CO 2 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 CO 2 emissions across various countries, we run a panel quantile regression to examine the asymmetry in the nexus between natural disasters and CO 2 emissions. We also discuss the mediating effects of energy consumption between natural disasters and CO 2 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 CO 2 emissions. Nevertheless, the impact of natural disasters on CO 2 emissions is asymmetric across different quantiles of CO 2 emissions. Furthermore, the technology level serves as an important moderating factor between natural disasters and CO 2 emissions. The mediating effect results reveal that natural disasters not only directly reduce CO 2 emissions but also indirectly promote carbon reduction by restraining energy consumption. Finally, several policy implications are provided to reduce CO 2 emissions and the damage caused by natural disasters.