Role of technological innovation and globalization in BRICS economies: policy towards environmental sustainability

The present study aims to discover the impact of political risk, globalization and technological innovation on the ecological footprint in the BRICS economies by employing a dataset covering the period between 1990 and 2017 and incorporating non-renewable energy utilization and economic growth as other regressors through the utilization of panel quantile regression. The outcomes established that economic growth, non-renewable energy usage, political risk and technological innovation increase ecological footprint. Conversely, globalization significantly decreases the ecological footprint. The panel ordinary least squares approach serves as a sensitivity test for the robustness of the analysis. Furthermore, the Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel causality test confirmed that a bidirectional causal interaction exists between ecological footprint and the regressors of technological innovation, globalization, non-renewable energy and economic growth, while a one-way causal interconnection runs from ecological footprint to political risk. Notably, the general policy suggestion indicates the need for policymakers to intensively coordinate efforts to combat the serious environmental deterioration in the BRICS economies.