What drives carbon emissions in the long-run? The role of renewable energy and agriculture in achieving the sustainable development goals

The South Asian economies encounter several issues for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (S.D.G.s), global warming is one of the serious key issues facing these countries. For addressing this issue, a comprehensive policy framework is required at the context of South Asian Countries. In this view, the present study scrutinises the impact of renewable energy-consumption (R.E.C.p.), non-renewable energy consumption (R.E.n.), agriculture (A.g.), urbanisation (U.b.), and economic growth (E.G.) on CO2 emissions for selected South Asian economies over period of 1990–2018. For this purpose, we apply fully modified ordinary least square technique and variance decomposition analysis. The empirical outcomes demonstrate that R.E.C.p. and agriculture reduces carbon emission while R.E.n. and U.b. increase environmental degradation. Moreover, the findings also confirm the E.K.C.-hypothesis in South Asian countries. Based on the results, a detailed S.D.G.-oriented policy framework has been suggested, which may help these economies towards achieving the main goals of S.D.G. 13, S.D.G. 07, S.D.G. 08, S.D.G. 11, and S.D.G. 02. This study contributes to the present literature by suggesting S.D.G. oriented policy framework.