The role of economic globalization in reducing CO2 emissions: implications for sustainable development in South Asian nations

The rapid economic growth has created many environmental problems. These problems include global warming and natural resource depletion. South Asian countries are rich in NAT, and these countries are moving toward ECG. Despite the availability of rich literature, very few studies have investigated the associations of NAT, ECG, and CO2 emissions in South Asian nations. Therefore, this research probes this association in the presence of urbanization and trade. For this purpose, yearly data from 1980 to 2019 are investigated with the help of second-generation methodologies like cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL). CS-ARDL results show that ECG and economic growth are improving air quality in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. Urbanization, NAT, and trade are contaminating the environmental quality. In light of these findings, some important policy recommendations are provided to grasp sustainable development in South Asian nations.