Abstract
Until recently, many countries’ policies were motivated by economic growth; however, few strategies were developed to prevent environmental deterioration including reducing the ecological footprint. In this context, the purpose of this study was to analyze the role of natural resource rents, technological innovation, and financial development on the ecological footprint in 90 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) economies. This research divided the BRI economies into high income, middle-income, and low-income levels to capture income differences. This research used the second-generation panel unit root, cointegration, and augmented mean group estimators to calculate the robust and reliable outcomes. Based on the annual data from 1991 to 2018, the findings show that natural resource rents drastically damage the quality of the environment, whereas technological innovations are helpful in reducing ecological footprint. Moreover, the outcome of the interaction term (natural resource rents and technological innovations) negatively impacts the ecological footprint. Interestingly, these findings were similar in the three income groups. In addition, financial development improved environmental quality in the middle-income BRI economies, but reduced it in high-income, low-income, and full sample countries. Furthermore, the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) concept has been validated across all BRI economies. Policymakers in BRI countries should move resources away from resource-rich sectors of industries/manufacturing sectors to enhance/promote economic growth and use these NRRs efficiently for a progressive, sustainable environment. Based on these findings, several efficient policy suggestions are proposed.
Highlights
Extractions using technological innovation (TI) [16]. This justifies the reason for including variables such as natural resource rents (NRRs), financial development (FD), and TI in ecological function, so the objective of this study was to analyze the impact of NRR, FD, TI, and economic growth on ecological footprint (EF) in Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) economies
The results revealed that NRR and urbanization enhanced EF, while globalization and human capital improved environmental quality
Using the assertions made above, we developed the following model to explain the influence of NRR, TI, and FD on the EF in the case of 90 BRI economies
Summary
Environmental conditions such as pollution, substandard sanitation, and significant loss of natural resource rents (NRRs) and forest reserves have been key concerns for many countries. Meager environmental conditions jeopardize human health and economic well-being. These elements are vulnerable to climate change including health, natural and physical capital, and access to water, food, and land [1]. These environmental problems have sparked a worldwide campaign to resist climate change. In recent years, most of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) economies have been straining efforts to upgrade their industrial movement, massive combustion of fossil fuel energy in
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