Globally, the issues about sustainable development are on the increase. Moreover, these issues are rising every day in Pakistan, as remittances are increasing, technology innovation is ambiguous, natural resources are degraded, and economic expansion might pose serious challenges to the environment. Thus, this research looks at how remittances, natural resources, technological innovation, and economic growth affect carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in Pakistan by controlling energy consumption and urbanization from 1990 to 2019. The Bayer and Hanck test of combined cointegration discloses a cointegration between remittances, natural resources, technological innovations, economic growth, and CO2 emissions. Moreover, the autoregressive distributive lag model (ARDL) proposes a significant positive association between remittances and CO2 emissions in the long run, indicating that the increase in remittances distresses the environmental performance of Pakistan. Our study confirms that natural resources decrease CO2 emissions while technological advancement, economic progress, energy use, and urbanization increase CO2 emissions. In addition, the results of robustness checks by employing fully modified ordinary least squares and dynamic ordinary least squares are parallel to the conclusions of ARDL estimations. Furthermore, the frequency causality test results show that remittances, natural resources, technological innovation, economic growth, energy use, and urbanization cause CO2 emissions at different frequencies. Therefore, to achieve the sustainable development goals, appropriate policy repercussions can be developed toward advanced and environmentally sustainable sources of energy.
Keywords: Economic growth; Natural resource; Pakistan; Remittances; Technological innovation.
© 2022. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.