Adaptation Versus Mitigation Climate Finance and Ecological Footprint in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Method of Moments Quantile Regression

Climate finance in Sub-Saharan Africa has grown, yet the region’s ecological footprint continues to exceed its biocapacity. Most studies treat climate finance as a single aggregate and estimate average effects. This study asks whether adaptation and mitigation finance affect ecological pressure differently and whether these associations vary across the conditional footprint distribution. Using a panel of 48 Sub-Saharan African countries over 2010 to 2022, it measures adaptation and mitigation finance as disbursements per capita from the OECD Climate-Related Development Finance database and ecological footprint per capita from the National Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts. After tests for cross-sectional dependence, slope heterogeneity, unit roots and cointegration, the study applies the Method of Moments Quantile Regression, tests the equality of the two finance coefficients at each quantile, and separates the carbon and land-based footprint components. Mitigation finance is associated with a lower footprint, more strongly at the upper conditional quantiles, whereas adaptation finance is associated with a lower footprint mainly at the lower and middle conditional quantiles. The two coefficients differ significantly at the tails, and the pattern holds with year fixed effects and, broadly, in first differences. Implied elasticities vary with disbursement levels. Allocation of each stream should reflect national footprint structure.