To import or not to import: A global comparative study of energy and natural resource policies for sustainable development

Nonattainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) is a pressing policy concern. The energy-led growth pattern needs a policy-level reorientation to address this concern. This present study examines the impacts of energy imports and natural resource rents on sustainable development across 127 countries over 1990-2019. The empirical model also takes account of population growth, corruption, and globalization. Using the cross-sectional augmented autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) method, the results reveal that energy imports negatively influence sustainable development in both the short and long run. The utilization of domestic natural resource rents has a positive yet insignificant influence on sustainable development. The roles of population growth and globalization are found to be favorable, while corruption has a negative effect on sustainable development. The study outcomes are utilized to develop a benchmark policy design to attain sustainable development. The policy framework is designed by reorienting the energy import and natural resource rent, while calibrating the effects of population growth, corruption, and globalization.