Because of the lack of econometric studies in relevance to the link between tourism and renewable energy, the goal of this study is to remedy this lack and to explore the causal relationships between renewable energy consumption, the number of tourist arrivals, the trade openness ratio, economic growth, foreign direct investment (FDI), and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions for a panel of 22 Central and South American countries, spanning the period 1995–2010. The empirical findings document that the variables under investigation are cointegrated. Short-run Granger causality tests illustrate unidirectional causalities running from: (i) renewable energy to CO₂ emissions and trade; (ii) tourism to trade and FDI; and (iii) economic growth to renewable energy and tourism. In the long run, there is evidence of bidirectional causality between renewable energy, tourism, FDI, trade, and emissions. Thus, renewable energy and tourism are in a strong long-run causal relationship. Moreover, long-run estimates for the whole panel and for the three income panel groups considered (Lower Middle, Upper Middle, High) highlight that tourism, renewable energy, and FDI contribute to the reduction of emissions, while trade and economic growth lead to higher carbon emissions. Therefore, attracting foreign direct investment, encouraging the use of renewable energy, and tourism development, particularly green tourism, are good policies for this region to combat climate change.

This paper uses the vector error correction model (VECM) and Granger causality tests to investigate short and long-run relationships between per capita carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, real gross domestic product (GDP), renewable and non-renewable energy consumption, trade openness ratio and agricultural value added (AVA) in Tunisia spanning the period 1980–2011. The Johansen-Juselius test shows that all our considered variables are cointegrated. Short-run Granger causality tests reveal the existence of bidirectional causalities between AVA and CO₂ emissions, and between AVA and trade. There are short-run unidirectional causalities running from non-renewable energy and GDP to AVA and to renewable energy, and running from CO₂ emissions to renewable energy. Interestingly, there are long-run bidirectional causalities between all considered variables. Our long-run parameters estimates show that non-renewable energy, trade and AVA increase CO₂ emissions, whereas renewable energy reduces CO₂ emissions. In addition, the inverted U-shaped environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis is not supported. Our policy recommendations are to increase international economic exchanges because this gives new opportunities to the agricultural sector to develop and to benefit from renewable energy technology transfer. Subsidizing renewable energy use in the agricultural sector enables it to become more competitive on the international markets while polluting less and contributing to combat global warming.