ABSTRACT Amid increasing environmental issues, concerns about the sustainability of economic growth, in the context of globalization, have intensified. This study explores the heterogeneous effect of economic growth, economic globalization (EG), renewable energy consumption, and natural resources rents on the ecological sustainability, under the frameworks of environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and load capacity curve (LCC). The analysis is performed for 58 countries for the period 1990–2021 using a newly introduced quantile estimator. Findings do not provide any evidence regarding the quadratic relationship between economic growth and ecology. The impact of EG tends to be heterogeneous, varying across quantiles, indicators and environmental conditions. Natural resources rents damage the environment across most quantiles and for both indicators. However, rents do not affect the ecology at highest and some low quantiles, using the LCF as an indicator. The results further demonstrate that ecological improvements can be promoted by transitioning to renewable energy and by decreasing reliance on resources. Policy implications should be implemented based on the level of damage and quality of the environment. Rofaida Benotsmane has used AI tools such as Chat‐GPT to rephrase some of the sentences in the literature review and discussion sections and this is to a very limited extent. Also, Google Scholar Lab was used to search for specific studies, but to a limited extent.
Benotsmane et al. (Fri,) studied this question.