Abstract
The remittance-carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions nexus remains a hotly debated topic in the literature, with the majority of studies offering mixed conclusions. This study attempts to reconcile these disparities by investigating the nonlinear effect of remittances on the CO2 emissions in top-remittance receiving countries in Southern African Customs Union (SACU) region, using the modified Environmental Kuznets Curve framework which focuses on the effect that remittances might have on CO(2)emissions. The Cross-Sectional Autoregressive Distributed Lag (CS-ADRL) approach is applied to these top-remittance receiving countries from 1990 to 2020, representing a pioneering investigation for these countries. The finding of this study reveal that both the estimated coefficient of remittances and its quadratic term are statistically significant, with remittances displaying a positive coefficient and the quadratic term exhibiting a negative coefficient. This pattern confirms the presence of a modified EKC hypothesis, meaning as remittances increases, CO2 levels displays an unambiguous inverted U-shaped trajectory.