Uneeb Ur Rehman Ali

The low-carbon transition is increasingly mineral-intensive, raising the question of whether industrial-metal market conditions coincide with different carbon-intensity adjustments across inherited mineral structures. We examine 45 Asian and Pacific economies over 2005–2022 (756 economy-year observations), combining a real aluminium–copper–nickel–tin–zinc price index with predetermined mineral dependence measured from 1995–2004 non-fuel mineral rents. Economy and year fixed-effects estimates indicate a positive exposure gradient: across the interquartile exposure difference, a one-standard-deviation larger annual metal-price movement is associated with a 0.00577-log-point (0.58%) differential in annual carbon-intensity change. Design-aware inference is weaker than conventional economy-clustered inference (economy-CR2/Satterthwaite p = 0.0571; exact circular-shift p = 0.0556). The accounting decomposition yields point estimates of 0.0097 for primary-energy intensity and 0.0012 for CO₂ per unit of primary energy, although their difference is not statistically distinguished under CR2 inference. Allowing world industrial activity and oil-price movements to separate mineral dependence slopes reduces the focal coefficient to 0.00448 (p = 0.474), and identifying support is concentrated among materially mineral-dependent economies. The evidence documents a bounded exposure-conditioned association embedded in the wider industrial and commodity cycle. For planning, the findings support assessing energy demand, efficiency, and the carbon characteristics of supporting energy supply alongside mineral development decisions.

This study examines how rainfall and groundwater recharge can help mitigate drought conditions, using the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) as the drought indicator. It focuses on the top ten countries experiencing groundwater overexploitation and incorporates a global average perspective to provide deeper insights into these critical relationships. These insights are essential for informed policy-making and integrated decision-making, involving a range of stakeholders from local users to international policymakers on drought mitigation efforts from 1961 to 2022. The analysis employs the novel technique to estimate Dynamic Panel Threshold Regression (DPThR) model. The findings reveal that a 1-millimeter increase in rainfall improves the SPEI by 0.003 units, thereby reducing drought likelihood. The threshold for mitigating drought effects is identified at 614.41 millimeters of annual rainfall, with Pakistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia being the most at-risk countries when rainfall falls below this level. Conversely, a one-standard-deviation increase in groundwater recharge enhances the SPEI by 5.06 units, indicating a substantial reduction in drought incidence. The threshold for mitigating drought effects is identified at –0.0039 standard deviations, with China, Iran, Mexico, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United States being the most drought-prone when recharge falls below this level. Furthermore, it was found that temperature exerts a consistently negative and highly significant effect, indicating that warming intensifies drought through evapotranspiration and soil moisture depletion. While CO ₂ emissions show no significant direct impact. Moreover, the study identifies unidirectional causality running from rainfall, groundwater recharge, temperature, and CO ₂ emissions, reinforcing the dominance of hydro-climatic forces in driving drought variability. Policy recommendations include advancing artificial rainfall, enhancing groundwater recharge, and maintaining country-specific water use thresholds to reduce drought risk and strengthen water and climate resilience in overexploited regions.