Revisiting Natural Resources—Globalization-Environmental Quality Nexus: Fresh Insights from South Asian Countries

Widespread interference of human activities has resulted in major environmental problems, including pollution, global warming, land degradation, and biodiversity loss, directly affecting the sustainability and quality of the environment and ecosystem. The study aims to address the impact of the extraction of natural resources and globalization on the environmental quality in the South Asian countries for the period 1991–2018. A new methodology Dynamic Common Correlated Effects is used to deal with cross-sectional dependence. Most previous studies use only carbon dioxide emissions, which is an inadequate measure of environmental quality. Besides carbon dioxide emissions, we have used other greenhouse gas emissions like nitrous oxide and methane emissions with a new indicator, “ecological footprint”. Long-run estimation results indicate a positive and significant relationship of natural resources with all greenhouse gas emissions and a negative association with the ecological footprint. Globalization shows a negative association with carbon dioxide emissions and nitrous oxide emissions and a positive relationship with the ecological footprint. Institutional performance is negatively correlated with carbon dioxide emissions, methane emissions, and ecological footprint while positively associated with nitrous oxide emissions. The overall findings highlight the pertinence of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and ecological footprint, proper utilizing of natural resources, enhancing globalization, and improving institutional performance to ensure environmental sustainability.