Green energy transition, economic complexity, green finance, and ecological footprint: Shaping the SDGs in the presence of geopolitical risk

IF 3.5 4区社会学 Q2 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

Natural Resources Forum Pub Date : 2024-08-26 DOI:10.1111/1477-8947.12556

Xiaoli Wang, Jie Yang, Mahmood Ahmad, Zahoor Ahmed

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Achieving sustainable development while mitigating environmental degradation is a pressing global challenge. Economic development, accompanied by industrialization, fossil fuel consumption, and unsustainable use of natural resources, is widely identified in the literature as a leading cause of environmental degradation. Green energy transition (GET) and economic complexity—the shift towards more advanced and knowledge‐driven manufacturing, can be crucial strategies in reducing ecological degradation and helping countries achieve climate change mitigation targets. Green finance can play an important role in environmental sustainability, while geopolitical risk can impede countries' climate mitigation efforts. In this context, this study investigates the impact of GET, economic complexity, green finance, and geopolitical risk on the ecological footprint in OECD countries from 1995 to 2021. These four critical factors are integrated into the same environmental policy framework due to their potential to influence environmental sustainability in OECD economies. The study employed the Method of Moments Quantile Regression to provide robust estimates across different quantiles. The empirical outcomes unveiled that GET significantly reduces the ecological footprint across all quantiles. The economic complexity posed a significant and negative impact across all quantiles except at the lower quantile (τ = 0.10). Green finance also poses a negative impact, indicating its effectiveness in promoting environmental sustainability. However, geopolitical risk exacerbates the ecological footprint. The control variables, GDP and urbanization, are found to increase the ecological footprint. In terms of policy implications, this study suggests that policymakers should focus on increasing the share of green energy, fostering economic complexity and green finance, and mitigating geopolitical tensions to reduce the ecological footprint and achieve environmental sustainability in OECD nations.

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绿色能源转型、经济复杂性、绿色金融和生态足迹：在地缘政治风险中塑造可持续发展目标

在实现可持续发展的同时缓解环境退化是一项紧迫的全球性挑战。经济发展伴随着工业化、化石燃料消耗和自然资源的不可持续利用，在文献中被广泛认为是环境退化的主要原因。绿色能源转型（GET）和经济复杂性--向更先进和知识驱动的制造业转变--可以成为减少生态退化和帮助各国实现减缓气候变化目标的重要战略。绿色金融可在环境可持续性方面发挥重要作用，而地缘政治风险则会阻碍各国的气候减缓努力。在此背景下，本研究调查了 1995 年至 2021 年 GET、经济复杂性、绿色金融和地缘政治风险对经合组织国家生态足迹的影响。由于这四个关键因素可能影响经合组织经济体的环境可持续性，因此将其纳入同一环境政策框架。研究采用了矩量回归法（Method of Moments Quantile Regression），以提供不同量级的稳健估计值。实证结果表明，在所有量级中，GET 都能显著减少生态足迹。除较低的量值（τ = 0.10）外，经济复杂性对所有量值都产生了显著的负面影响。绿色金融也带来了负面影响，表明其在促进环境可持续性方面的有效性。然而，地缘政治风险加剧了生态足迹。GDP 和城市化这两个控制变量会增加生态足迹。就政策影响而言，本研究建议政策制定者应注重增加绿色能源的比例，促进经济复杂性和绿色金融，缓解地缘政治紧张局势，以减少生态足迹，实现经合组织国家的环境可持续性。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Natural Resources Forum 环境科学-环境科学

CiteScore

6.10

自引率

0.00%

发文量

审稿时长

>36 weeks

期刊介绍： Natural Resources Forum, a United Nations Sustainable Development Journal, focuses on international, multidisciplinary issues related to sustainable development, with an emphasis on developing countries. The journal seeks to address gaps in current knowledge and stimulate policy discussions on the most critical issues associated with the sustainable development agenda, by promoting research that integrates the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. Contributions that inform the global policy debate through pragmatic lessons learned from experience at the local, national, and global levels are encouraged. The Journal considers articles written on all topics relevant to sustainable development. In addition, it dedicates series, issues and special sections to specific themes that are relevant to the current discussions of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD). Articles must be based on original research and must be relevant to policy-making. Criteria for selection of submitted articles include: 1) Relevance and importance of the topic discussed to sustainable development in general, both in terms of policy impacts and gaps in current knowledge being addressed by the article; 2) Treatment of the topic that incorporates social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainable development, rather than focusing purely on sectoral and/or technical aspects; 3) Articles must contain original applied material drawn from concrete projects, policy implementation, or literature reviews; purely theoretical papers are not entertained.