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This study investigates the nexus between economic growth, foreign direct investment (FDI), technological advancement, household consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) among ASEAN countries. The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis suggests an inverted U-shaped relationship between environmental degradation and economic development, signifying that pollution levels primarily increase with economic growth but decline after reaching a turning point. Employing panel data spanning from 1990 to 2022 for seven ASEAN countries including Cambodia, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines and Vietnam, this study uses Pooled Mean Group (PMG) analysis to scrutinise the short-run and long-run relationships among the variables. The findings provide support for the validity of the EKC hypothesis in the ASEAN region, signalling the existence of an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and GHG. In the short run, FDI and economic growth were found to increase emissions, while in the long run, growth in technological advancements and gross production were correlated with a reduction in GHG. The findings offer significant insights particularly for policymakers among ASEAN countries to formulate effective strategies that balance technological advancement, FDI attraction economic growth and environmental sustainability, while also emphasising the importance of promoting sustainable consumption patterns.

In the modern world, energy consumption, carbon emissions, and economic growth are concerns for all nations that want to continue expanding by striking a balance between energy and carbon emissions. One reason for this is that these fuels will cause global warming due to climate change. Environmental taxes are increasingly seen as a crucial component of economic policy, where a well-constructed tax can encourage innovation and economic incentives. The nexus of the economic growth and environment is now becoming one of the essential relations for policymakers. Nevertheless, most of the previous studies are limited to European countries. Thus, this research investigates the cointegration of Environmental Tax (ET) towards Economic Growth (EG) with Interest Rate (IR) as a control variable for the case of selected ASEAN countries, namely Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. The yearly data set covering the period from 2014 to 2021 was utilized as the sample period for the panel autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) approaches. Results revealed that both the Environmental Tax and Interest Rate have a long-run negative effect on Economic growth but have a positive influence in the short run. From this finding, the implication of environmental tax toward economic growth also may depend on the economic conditions of an economy.

Utilizing agricultural waste is a sustainable approach to reduce the production cost of bio-based products. Here, we report a novel haloalkaliphilic strain, Halomonas nigrificans X339, which exhibits an exceptional ability to utilize various low-cost carbon sources. Compared to other halophiles, X339 could be cultivated at an optimal salinity as low as 2 % (w/v). X339 accumulated extraordinarily large granules of polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB). In open batch fermentation, X339 produced 5.11 g/L of PHB from wheat straw hydrolysate (WSH) at 3 % salinity and pH 9, with a PHB/carbon source conversion rate of 0.30 g/g. This represents the highest PHB yield reported from straw hydrolysates in shake-flask fermentation by halophiles. Additionally, whole genome of X339 was sequenced to identify candidate genes related to carbon source utilization. Our findings will benefit researchers in developing a suitable chassis for Next Generation Industrial Biotechnology, and offer a sustainable and eco-friendly solution for bio-based products., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)