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Impact of foreign direct investment, natural resources, renewable energy consumption, and economic growth on environmental degradation: evidence from BRICS, developing, developed and global countries

Environmental Science and Pollution Research volume 28, pages 21789–21798 (2021)Cite this article

Abstract

This research examined the impact of foreign direct investment, natural resources, renewable energy consumption, and economic growth on environmental degradation in BRICS, developing, developed, and global countries for the time period from 1991 to 2018 by using dynamic fixed effect model, GMM, and system GMM estimators. The examined results indicate that FDI causes environmental degradation in BRICS and developing countries while in developed countries, FDI helps environmental degradation reduction. The empirical results indicate that fuel resources and renewable energy consumption help to reduce the environment degradation in BRICS, developing, developed, and global countries while ore and metal resources cause environment degradation improvement in developed countries. Total natural resources (coal, oil, natural gas, and mineral rents) and economic growth are the main factors that boost the environmental degradation in BRICS, developing, developed, and global countries. Based on the examined results, policies are suggested for BRICS, developing, developed, and global countries. It is suggested that policy makers in these countries not only reply to protect environmental degradation but also support the growth of fuel resources, ore, and metal resource and total natural resources.

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Data availability

Data is available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to the Editor and anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics, Henan University, Kaifeng, China

    Bashir Muhammad & Sher Khan

  2. School of Economics and Management, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China

    Muhammad Kamran Khan & Muhammad Imran Khan

Authors
  1. Bashir Muhammad
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  2. Muhammad Kamran Khan
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  3. Muhammad Imran Khan
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  4. Sher Khan
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Contributions

Muhammad Kamran Khan: supervision; Bashir Muhammad: writing and data analysis; Muhammad Imran Khan and Sher Khan: reference and format of manuscript.

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Correspondence to Muhammad Kamran Khan.

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Muhammad, B., Khan, M.K., Khan, M.I. et al. Impact of foreign direct investment, natural resources, renewable energy consumption, and economic growth on environmental degradation: evidence from BRICS, developing, developed and global countries. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 21789–21798 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-12084-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-12084-1

Keywords

  • Foreign direct investment
  • CO2 emission
  • Natural resources
  • Renewable energy consumption
  • Economic growth