Modeling the dynamic links among natural resources, economic globalization, disaggregated energy consumption, and environmental quality: Fresh evidence from GCC economies

Abstract

The accelerated speed of economic growth has come with challenges, including depletion of natural resources, issues related to globalization, and degradation of the environment. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies are rich in mineral resources, and economic globalization has put them in the spotlight for the developed world. This paper investigates the impact of natural resource abundance, economic globalization, and disaggregated energy consumption on GCC countries' environmental quality by considering urbanization and economic growth from 1990 to 2018, thus filling a gap in the literature. The study applies an advanced econometric approach, a cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lags (CS-ARDL) estimator, for short-run and long-run estimation that allows heterogeneity in the slope parameters and dependencies across countries. The findings show that natural resource abundance significantly improves environmental quality, that economic globalization and renewable energy consumption mitigate emission levels in the GCC economies, and that urbanization, economic growth, and non-renewable energy consumption significantly deteriorate environmental quality. The paper provides novel empirical evidence and policy recommendations for sustainable development.