ABSTRACT The Belt and Road Initiative has expanded infrastructure and economic integration; research has not sufficiently examined how forest conservation and green technological innovation jointly impact climate outcomes. Existing studies isolate ecological risks or green technology adoption, overlooking their collective mitigation potential, which impedes progress toward SDGs 13 and 15, especially in economies with uneven institutional and technological capacities. This study develops a framework to assess how forest area, green technological innovation, natural resource rents, and environmental taxation influence CO₂ emissions across 14 BRI economies from 2000 to 2021. It applies Dynamic Common Correlated Effects (DCCE) to address cross‐sectional dependence and Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) to capture distributional heterogeneity, with System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) as robustness. The results show that a 1% increase in forest area reduces emissions by 0.41% under DCCE and by 0.16%–0.12% across quantiles. Green technological innovation decreases emissions under DCCE by 0.02% and delivers stronger mitigation effects (25.0%–10.4%) in higher‐emitting quantiles. Environmental taxes significantly impede decarbonization, while natural resource rents exhibit mixed, increasingly adverse impacts among high‐emitting economies. Dumitrescu Hurlin panel causality tests reveal uni‐ and bidirectional links among these factors, indicating feedback effects. Distributional estimates highlight how ecological assets and technological upgrading jointly shape the emissions income nexus. System GMM results confirm emissions persistence ( ρ = 0.988), underscoring the long‐term consequences of current policies. The findings refine Environmental Kuznets Curve & Ecological Modernization perspectives and support policies that scale afforestation, reinforce environmental tax regimes, and recycle resource revenues into clean technology.
Ge et al. (2026) studied this question.