Impact of Information and Communication Technologies, Renewable Energy, and Natural Resources on Environment in Developing Countries

Abstract

The developing countries have been recurrently confronting a range of environmental issues that pose significant challenges to their sustainable development. The inter-linkages between Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), renewable energy (RE), Natural resources (NR), and ecological footprint (EFP) are turning to be crucial in this regard. We also incorporate economic growth (EG) and Green Technology innovations along with ICT, RE, and NR to examine their influence on EFP in the developing-8 (D-8) countries. A panel data set for the period 1998-2024 for the D-8 member developing countries has been used for empirical analysis. A cross-sectional augmented autoregressive distributive lag (CS-ARDL) estimation method is employed after testing for the cross-sectional dependence. It is found that the natural resources extraction and economic growth enhance the ecological footprint in the long-run. Conversely, renewable energy consumption, ICT, and green innovation show a negative and significant impact on the ecological footprint, suggesting that ICT technologies, innovations, and renewable energy enhance energy efficiency and lower ecological damages. The empirical findings suggest that the Developing countries should concentrate on devising suitable policies to promote ICT, green innovations, and renewable energy generation to achieve environmental sustainability.