RESEARCH ARTICLE The relationship between good governance and CO 2 emissions in oil- and non-oil-producing countries: a dynamic panel study of sub-Saharan Africa Steve Yaw Sarpong 1 & Murad A. Bein 1 Received: 6 March 2020 / Accepted: 30 March 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020 Abstract This study empirically examined the relationship between CO 2 emissions and good governance in oil- and non-oil-producing countries in the SSA region. The findings from this paper revealed very interesting results proving that good governance has a negative relationship with CO 2 emissions. Oil-producing countries have good governance system to help control and reduce CO 2 emissions as compared to non-oil-producing countries. Particularly, in oil-producing countries, business regulatory environment, budget and fiscal management, as well as fiscal policy have a significant negative relationship with CO 2 emissions. But there is rather a positive relationship between these indicators and CO 2 emissions in non-oil-producing countries as they do not have the required structures and arrangements to control CO 2 emissions. Also, in oil-producing countries, property rights and rules have positive relationship with CO 2 emissions but in the case of non-oil-producing countries, there is a negative relationship, meaning that non-oil-producing countries have good legal system and rule-based governance structures that is capable of protecting property rights. There is positive relationship between quality of government administration and CO 2 emissions in oil- producing countries but negative for non-oil-producing countries. Trade liberalization and economic growth have positive relationship with CO 2 emissions in both categories. But urbanization has a negative relationship with CO 2 emissions in non- oil-producing countries but positive for oil-producing. The findings point that effective and efficient institutions is a vital element for SSA countries to help combat the increased emissions of CO 2 to engender growth. Keywords CO 2 emissions . Good governance . Environment . Oil producing . Non-oil producing Introduction Environmental degradation through pollution has been a ma- jor issue for countries around the world (Meinshausen et al. 2009; Rogelj et al. 2013; Deng et al. 2016; Castán Broto 2017). Abid (2016), emission of CO 2 will increase in econo- mies where there is weak lawful system to ensure that con- tracts between government institutions and organizations or businesses do not include strict adherence to standards for clean environment. The world has faced challenges with en- vironmental health due to carbon emissions for the past 130 years as CO 2 emissions from vegetation, animals, and other similar bases has increased by 45% (Carbon Footprint 2018). The British Petroleum (BP) statistical Review of World Energy recently reported that in 2017, CO 2 emissions stood at 33,444.00 million as compared to 2009 figure of 29,714.20 million tons indicating an increase of 3729.8 million tons (1.6%) of emissions (British Petroleum 2018). These figures according to the report are a course of alarm as the world is not witnessing improvement in the fight against global warming. African countries like Angola and Nigeria are the topmost economies producing oil with 1.7million and 1.5 million bar- rels of crude oil on daily basis respectively since 2016 and the numbers keep on increasing on monthly basis. Consequently, Nigeria causes 300 spills of oil yearly leading to environmen- tal degradation (U.S. Energy Information Administration 2013). The African continent alone experiences mortalities Responsible editor: Nicholas Apergis * Steve Yaw Sarpong stevesarp414@gmail.com Murad A. Bein muradbein2019@gmail.com 1 Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Cyprus International University, Via Mersin 10, Nicosia, North Cyprus, Turkey Environmental Science and Pollution Research https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-08680-w