Modeling nonlinear urban transformation, natural resource dependence, energy consumption, and environmental sustainability

Abstract

Despite resonant advancements in promoting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) designed by the sustainability think tank, the United Nations, anthropogenic emissions remain a persistent impediment to the realization of climate change mitigation. This study investigates the heterogeneous impacts of nonlinear urban transformation, natural resource dependence, and energy consumption on environmental burden across China's provincial development levels in the presence of industrial investments and international economic activities. We employ advanced econometric strategies based on various samples of 31 Chinese provinces from 2005 through 2018 to yield novel empirical results. Firstly, natural resource dependence and energy consumption increase the environmental burden with declining degrees of influence from the highest level of development (HLD) through the low level of development (LLD) in both aggregated and disaggregated panels. Secondly, in aggregated panels, an inverse U-shaped link between urban transformation and environmental burden only prevails for the national dataset and east zone (i.e., HLD). Urban transformation unveils an environmental burden mitigation impact in the HLD region for disaggregated panels. While it manifests an environmental burden promotion impact in the LLD provinces, mixed effects of urban transformation are observed across the medium level of development (MLD). Among other critical variables, industrial investments aggravated the environmental burden with the most intensive impact in HLD and the least intensive in the LLD region. Furthermore, foreign investments and international trade reduce the environmental burden for HLD, whereas it boosts the same for LLD and MLD. Besides, economic performance induces mixed influence across various levels of development. Finally, the provincial findings for high, medium, and low development levels demonstrated consistency with the theory of environmental transition, ecological modernization theory, and compact city theory. We suggest that energy and natural resource conservation and planned urban transformation with sustainable energy pathways could accomplish the SDGs, especially SDG-13 and SDG-7.