“Less Talk, More Action for the Climate: Reimagining Environmental Sustainability in Africa”—The Role of Environmental Tax, Globalization, and Clean Energy

ABSTRACT The growing implications of global economic activities on climate change have intensified research on strategies to achieve environmental sustainability. However, in Africa, stronger climate actions are required due to the continent's high vulnerability to climate effects, low usage of clean energy, and increasing globalization. Motivated by these challenges, this study examines the influence of environmental tax, globalization, and clean energy on Africa's environmental sustainability using unbalanced panel data of 27 African countries from 2000 to 2020. The study employed Fixed Effect regression as an estimation technique to control unobserved heterogeneity and cross‐sectional dependency while the Driscoll–Kraay Standard Error (DKSE) is employed for robustness check to account for heteroskedasticity and autocorrelation. The results demonstrate that environmental tax functions more as revenue‐generating tools than as an effective mechanism for achieving environmental sustainability in Africa, while globalization shows no strong evidence of significantly reducing CO 2 emissions. On the other hand, we found that clean energy consumption significantly contributes to the reduction in CO 2 emissions, highlighting its critical role in achieving a sustainable environment. Also, the results suggest that stringent environmental measures must be adopted by African countries toward mitigating rising CO 2 emissions and achieving environmental sustainability. Lastly, the empirical findings underscore the critical role of environmental tax, globalization, and clean energy in achieving environmental sustainability in Africa, as a well‐balanced integration of these three elements can create pathways toward sustainable development.