Harnessing the synergistic impacts of environmental innovations, financial development, green growth, and ecological footprint through the lens of SDGs policies for countries exhibiting high ecological footprints

Abstract

According to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the principal threats to human well-being encompass both non-renewable and renewable energy sources, alongside a mounting environmental deficit, which aligns with the targets of SDG-7 and SDG-13. This study explores how environmental technologies, financial growth, and energy use influence the ecological footprint and green growth in the top-ten countries with the biggest ecological footprint from 1990 to 2019. Environmental innovations, green growth, and renewable energy improve the environment, while financial expansion and the use of non-renewable energy have been shown to be detrimental to the environment. Financial expansion, ecological impact, and non-renewable energy constrain green growth. However, environmental innovation and renewable energy deployment have a cumulative effect on green growth. Moreover, the results of the panel causality approach signpost a bidirectional causal association between environmental innovations, green growth, non-renewable and renewable energy, and ecological footprint. Nevertheless, it is observed that there exists a unidirectional causal relationship from financial development to ecological footprint and green growth. Moreover, this paper provides an in-depth evaluation and offers significant policy recommendations, both in a general sense and specifically targeted towards countries with the highest ecological footprints.