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The escalating levels of environmental degradation along with escalating conflicts and incidents of trade disputes among regional powers can exert a detrimental influence on the prospects for achieving sustainable development (SUD). Prior empirical works have tended to overlook the contributions of trade globalization and external conflicts to the SUD. Furthermore, prevailing studies on SUD often rely on various environmental metrics, economic growth measures, or adjusted net savings as proxies, which fall short in measuring the multifaceted essence of the SUD concept. Thus, this research work assesses the heterogeneous effects of trade globalization, external conflicts, and financial development on a comprehensive SUD index based on environmental, economic, and social factors from 1992 to 2019 in the twenty highest CO2 emitters. The results derived from the application of the method of moment quantile regressions (MM-QR) reveal that trade globalization exerts a negative impact on SUD but its negative effect shows a diminishing trend when moving from the 10th to 90th quantile. Financial development likewise impedes SUD, with the degree of hindrance diminishing as quantiles ascend from lower to upper percentiles. External conflicts hinder SUD only at higher quantiles with the negative effect demonstrating an increasing trend. Furthermore, mineral resources and fossil energy pose detrimental effects on SUD, and these adverse effects exhibit a mounting trajectory as one moves from lower to upper quantiles. Finally, the policy implications of these novel outcomes are discussed.
Dai et al. (Sat,) studied this question.