Is there a trade-off between sustainable society targets in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Poverty and climate change are important matters to be struggled within the scope of sustainable development goals. However, there may exist a paradoxical situation that implies a trade-off relationship between poverty alleviation and CO2 emissions reduction efforts. In this context, this paper investigates whether such a relationship existed or not in the 48 Sub-Saharan African countries over the period 2010–2016 by employing a panel quantile regression method. Estimation outputs reveal that there is a strong trade-off between poverty and CO2 emissions for all quantile levels. Results also provide evidence that access to electricity has a reducing and enhancing effect on poverty and CO2 emissions, respectively. Results also show that institutional improvements help reducing both poverty and CO2 emissions.