The influence of corruption on environmental sustainability in the developing economies of Southern Africa

This paper analyses the impact of corruption on environmental sustainability in all 16 countries in the Southern region of Africa from 2010-2017. The paper uses two proxies of corruption: the Corruption Index and Corruption Ranking. Using two econometric methods, namely, the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) Granger causality test and the Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) techniques this study found largely congruent results on both causation and relationships, respectively. Firstly, the two indicators of corruption harmoniously show that corruption Granger causes the existing state of environmental sustainability in Southern African economies, and vice-versa. Moreover, in the short-run corruption was also found to worsen environmental sustainability for both regression models deployed using the two corruption indicators. In the long-term, the two measures of corruption conflicted with their findings. In this regard, though the relationship is contradicting in the long-run the corruption negative (becoming bad) effect of corruption ranking surpasses the corruption positive (becoming clean) effect of corruption index by nearly three times. This show how detrimental corruptible actions are to the natural environment. Overall, this paper consent to global reports explaining how Southern African environments are gradually deteriorating by putting corruption as one central practice causing extensive damage.