ABSTRACT Sustainable development requires balancing economic growth with ecological integrity, particularly in resource‐dependent economies. The accelerating environmental consequences of natural resource exploitation present substantial challenges for G‐20 countries as they work toward global climate and sustainability commitments. This study investigates how natural resource rents, their diversification, trade openness, and environmental technologies influence ecological sustainability from 1990 to 2023. Using the Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR), the analysis captures heterogeneous effects across the conditional distribution of the ecological footprint, thereby addressing cross‐country differences in environmental pressures. The results show that natural resource rents significantly increase ecological footprint in low‐ and middle‐pollution economies, with diminishing effects at higher quantiles. Diversification of resource rents is associated with elevated ecological pressures, suggesting that expanding extraction across multiple resource categories may amplify, rather than mitigate, environmental strain. Environmental technologies consistently reduce the ecological footprint across all quantiles, although their effectiveness is strongest in high‐pollution contexts. Trade openness exhibits a mitigating effect at upper quantiles, indicating that global integration can support cleaner production when environmental pressures are severe. Granger causality tests confirm bidirectional relationships between ecological footprint, natural resource rents, diversification, and environmental technologies, while GDP and trade openness exhibit unidirectional influence. Overall, the findings highlight the need for G‐20 policymakers to reduce reliance on resource rents, prioritize sustainable extraction practices, and accelerate the diffusion of green technologies. By recognizing the heterogeneous impacts across environmental regimes, the study provides quantile‐specific insights that can inform more targeted and effective sustainability strategies.
Yang et al. (2026) studied this question.