Infrastructures Development, Environmental Quality And Economic Growth In Nigeria

Abstract The earth as a planet supports human life, living and activities that attract extensive and intensive socioeconomic influences on the environment and the economy. Such activities like Infrastructures development exert increasing and divers environmental quality concerns and hence on economic growth. While these variables appear interrelated due to many factors including population growth, urbanization, industrialization etc., however, the nature of the interrelationship is not largely known especially in Nigeria. This study therefore investigated and examine their relationship using time series data between 1990-2019 by adopting Co-Integration estimation technique through the Bound Test approach of Auto Regressive Distributive Lag (ARDL) method, using percentage share of Building and Construction Sector (BCS) of GDP, Carbon dioxide percentage of fuel combustion (CTE), annual growth rate of Agriculture (AFF), population growth, GDP growth rate etc. as variables. The study revealed that infrastructures development, environmental quality explains economic growth and they all have both short and long run relationship while specifically population growth and AFF variables are positively significant to economic growth. The finding evidences the significance of the relationship and consequently recommended new roles for infrastructure sets and production processes that consider environmental quality mindsets to achieve positive green economic growth outcomes in Nigeria.JEL Classification: Q5, O18, O44