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The roles of renewable energy, globalization, population expansion and deliberative democracy on Sustainable Development in South Asia

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Abstract

South Asian region is extremely vulnerable to climate change which hampers its attainment of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). This study explores how sustainable development of South Asian nations is affected by the clean or renewable energy consumption, globalization, population growth and deliberative democracy. To tackle the effects of shocks within the cross-sectional units as well as to account for endogeneity, this study utilizes Common Correlated Effects Mean Group-Generalized Method of Moments (CCE-GMM) estimation technique proposed by Neal (2015). Common Correlated Effects Mean Group (CCE-MG) of Pesaran 2006 and Augmented Mean Group (AMG) by Eberhardt and Teal (2010) and Eberhardt and Bond (2009) techniques are also utilized as robustness checks. The empirical results reveal that the consumption of renewable or clean energy can significantly and positively affect sustainable development, implying that deploying clean energy technologies is helpful to achieve SDG agenda in South Asia. Population growth is found to be hampering sustainable development while deliberative democracy ensures this development. The impact of globalization on sustainable development was found to be negative yet insignificant. Bidirectional causal relationship was discovered between sustainable development and renewable energy, between population and sustainable development, between deliberative democracy and sustainable development and between deliberative democracy and globalization. Finally, the study provides policy directions to achieve sustainable development in South Asia via enhanced integration of renewable energy in the region’s energy mix.

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Funding

The research funding from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation (Ural Federal University Program of Development within the Priority-2030 Program) is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Intelligent Manufacturing, Xinxiang Vocational and Technical College, Xinxiang, 453001, China

    Li Zhang

  2. Department of Economics, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

    Zulfiqar Khan

  3. Graduate School of Economics and Management, Ural Federal University, Yekaterinburg, Russian Federation

    Shujaat Abbas

  4. MEU Research Unit, Middle East University, Amman, Jordan

    Shujaat Abbas

  5. Global Poverty Research Lab, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, United States of America

    Hasan Ahamed

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  1. Li Zhang
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  2. Zulfiqar Khan
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  3. Shujaat Abbas
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  4. Hasan Ahamed
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Contributions

L.Z: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Writing - Original Draft, Supervision; Z.K.: Resources, Writing - Original Draft, Formal analysis; S.A.: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Writing - Original Draft, Writing - review & editing; H.A.: Resources; Writing - Original Draft

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Correspondence to Shujaat Abbas.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 11 CCEMG and AMG result for individual countries
Full size table

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Zhang, ., Khan, Z., Abbas, S. et al. The roles of renewable energy, globalization, population expansion and deliberative democracy on Sustainable Development in South Asia. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 88775–88788 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-28690-8

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