Analysis of tourism and sustainable development in MENA economies

The existing studies suggest that the tourism sector may fast track the achievement of sustainable development due to its ability to guarantee the renewability of natural resources and the preservation of the ecosystem. Scholars also opine that tourist activities involve transportation that utilizes fossil fuels and non‐renewable energy sources. This implies that tourism may contribute to environmental degradation and slow down the achievement of the sustainable development agenda. In this paper, we contribute to this debate by examining the dynamic relationship between tourism and sustainable development in the case of the MENA region. Employing panel vector autoregressive based on the generalized method of moments framework (GMM‐PVAR) on data spanning from 1995 to 2019, we document that there is a positive and dynamic relationship between tourism and sustainable development in the MENA region. Further analysis shows that there is a bi‐causal relationship between the two variables; implying that they have a powerful prediction content of each other. The study recommends that effort should be made to develop pertinent policies to promote ecotourism in the region.