Towards green economy and sustainable development in Bangladesh: assessing the role of social and environmental indicators

The evolution towards a green economy integrating social, economic, and environmental concerns has opened a new window to pursue the sustainable development goals (SDGs), especially for emerging nations. Nonetheless, despite being a pressing concern on a global scale, empirical research into the potential for green economy development in the context of Bangladesh has remained notably inadequate. To fill this void, this study is an attempt to evaluate the connection among economic growth, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, education, life expectancy, and technology to conclude the ecological and socio-economic repercussions of a green economy in Bangladesh’s framework of achieving SDGs. Considering the statistical features of the annual data from 1990 to 2019, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method has been employed to analyze the connections between the chosen variables. The empirical outcomes show that an upsurge in CO2 is accompanied by a 3.66% increase in GDP over the long term, suggesting a positive and statistically significant relationship between the two variables. In addition, GDP increases by about 4.2% for every 1% increase in life expectancy. However, the relationship between technological innovation and education found an insignificant positive linkage with GDP. The most important takeaway from these findings is that the growth of Bangladesh’s economy is occurring at the expense of the environment. Hence, this research recommends that, as a developing nation, Bangladesh should concentrate on environment-friendly alternatives, which can be done through the introduction of a green economy to achieve a sustainably developed economy.