Natural Resource Rents, Institutional Quality, and Environmental Degradation in Resource-Rich Sub-Saharan African Countries

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The topic of the paper is relevant and very interesting. Authors used a wide range of international literature sources and cited them correctly. Most part of them are from the last few years. The authors highlighted the importance of the environmental degradation which have become a huge threat worldwide and the Sub-Saharan countries are not spared. In their paper they adopted and modified the model by Behun, Alola and Sarkodie (2019) who examined the nexus between CO2 emissions, resource rent, renewable and non-renewable energy in 16-EU countries. This modified model was helped them to reach their results. They showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between institutions and environmental degradation. The implication is that, in as much as there are policies in place, these policies are not effective in reducing carbon emission. I appreciate their opinion that the major problems in developing countries is not the absence of laws, but the implementation thereof. In the findings they suggested to increase the utilisation of renewable energy from wind, sun, and water to produce electricity.

Notes:

1.      I could not understand line 25-33

2.      In line 48 I could not find the beginning part of the bracket

Author Response

Thank you reviewer. Kindly find the attached document 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

I think the paper is interesting as it tries to link natural resource rents, institutions and quality if the environment. However, there are some points that need to be addressed:

1. The study places emphasis on the link between resource rents and environmental degradation through the EKC but fail to address this aspect in the discussion and conclusion sections in the case study.

2.  The study should also discuss the fact that Sub Sahara Africa include nations with very low %v of resource rents/GDP (Botswana with 0.7%) and nations with very high levels (Congo with 37%). How can you generalize your conclusions considering this huge gap?

3. The study should also add a paragraph related to weak/strong sustainability debate. 

Author Response

Thank you reviewer. Kindly find the attached document 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments to the Authors

I have reviewed with interest your manuscript entitled „Natural resource rents, institutional quality and environmental degradation in resource-rich Sub-Saharan African countries” submitted to the future number of Sustainability.

This study evaluated the natural resource nexus, institutional quality, and environmental degradation in selected Sub-Saharan African countries. The study proxied environmental degradation with carbon dioxide emissions per capita while income from natural resources as a percentage of GDP measured natural rents.

In my opinion the current version of your manuscript is suitable for publication in Sustainability, but after small revisions. The quality of the presentation should be improved. In general, manuscript is well written.

There are same grammar mistakes and awkward sentences, that have to be improved.

The article suffers from a number of small mistakes, ranging from misspellings to incorrectly phrased sentences.

Some adjustments are suggested to qualify the paper:

Issues include:

The Abstract should not exceed 200 words. Now there is 173 words. In my opinion it can be the lengthen.

General comment to the Introduction section: The content of the literature review chapter is related to the research topic. Up-to-date literature references are presented in the manuscript by the author(s).

In the chapter "Materials and Methods", the methodology is adequate.

In the chapter "Results", the results are displayed correctly.

The “Discussion” is informative. Moreover, the Authors attempt to discuss their important results and the rest is a quotation of literature. Please try to discuss your results in depth and link them with the appropriate literature throughout the whole section.

The Conclusions are correctly.

 

Same information are including in the text of Manuscript.

I hope that these comments help you to make an improved version of the manuscript.

 

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you reviewer. Kindly find the attached document 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx