Do economic endeavors complement sustainability goals in the emerging economies of South and Southeast Asia?

The consistent performance on the economic front and alarmingly increasing air pollution in the eight emerging economies of South and Southeast Asia compelled us to scrutinize whether the association between per capita income and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions remained nonlinear during the study period (1990-2015). Further, we intended to examine the long-run impacts of financial development, trade expansion, and nonrenewable energy consumption on CO2 emissions. Considering the possibility of the cross-sectional dependency, we employed a relatively new approach, i.e. the cross-sectional augmented distributed lag mean estimation. The simulation results of the study confirmed an N-shaped environmental Kuznets curve in the selected emerging economies. Further, the improvements in the financial sector, nonrenewable energy consumption, and trade expansion contributed to increasing the level of CO2 emissions in the long run. Based on the outcomes, we proposed the policy framework, which may help in achieving Sustainable Development Goals.