Russia-Ukraine war perspective of natural resources extraction: A conflict with impact on sustainable development

Abstract

The natural resources-economic growth nexus is extensively debated in the previous literature, and many studies are available. Nonetheless, the studies on the uncertainties created by post-pandemic recovery and Russian-Ukrainian conflict hovering around Russia's natural resource growth nexus; hence, this study contributed to the literature by probing the nexus of natural resource rents and economic growth in Russia from 1990 to 2021. The study also included controlling variables which include FDI and REO. Relevant time series methods are deployed, including NG and Perron, ADF unit root tests for determining the stationarity of the data, ARDL bound tests, and diagnostics tests. The outcomes exhibit that oil rents significantly improve economic growth in Russia. In contrast, mineral rents decrease economic growth in Russia in the study's short-run and long-run dynamics. The results also conclude that FDI and REO significantly enhance the economic growth of Russia, specifically in the long run. The robustness check analysis also supports the results of ARDL estimates. The results of the diagnostic tests indicate that there are no issues of heteroscedasticity or serial correlation, and they provide evidence that the model is stable. This study's conclusions have practical implications for policy regarding Russia's natural resources and their role in economic growth.