Sustainability and natural resources management in developed countries: The role of financial inclusion and human development

This study examines the nexus between natural resource management, human capital, financial inclusion, and sustainability concerns (i.e., ecological footprints) for the seven developed economies (G7) over the past two decades. Second-generation panel cointegration techniques and continuously updated fully modified (cup-FM) and bias-corrected (cup-BC) methodologies have been applied from 1992 to 2018. The empirical findings justify the presence of cross-sectional dependence, panel cointegration, and stationarity properties between the variables. Moreover, the results through cup-FM indicate that natural resources and human development significantly reduce the ecological footprints in G7. In contrast, financial inclusion reflects environmental pollution, provided that existing financial facilities and products must be linked with the sustainability agenda. Furthermore, regulatory quality reduces the EFP over the study period. Likewise, it is suggested that creating awareness among the community members and through regulatory pressure from the governments may generate productive results. Besides, limitations and future directions are also highlighted.