The sustainability cost of political crises: Do geopolitical risks affect the implementation of environmental policies?

The modern world faces several challenges in maintaining sustainability. Public decision-making often prioritizes self-centered interests, affecting the stringency of environmental policies. The significance of environmental policies in the complexities of this era remains underexplored in the liter...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Anwar, Ahsan, Balsalobre Lorente, Daniel, Sharif, Arshian, Syed, Qasim Raza
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2026
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha
Repositorio:RUIdeRA. Repositorio Institucional de la UCLM
OAI Identifier:oai:ruidera.uclm.es:10578/47364
Acceso en línea:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2025.128495
https://hdl.handle.net/10578/47364
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Environmental policy stringency
Geopolitical risk
Economic growth
Panel quantile regression
Sustainable development goals
Descripción
Sumario:The modern world faces several challenges in maintaining sustainability. Public decision-making often prioritizes self-centered interests, affecting the stringency of environmental policies. The significance of environmental policies in the complexities of this era remains underexplored in the literature. The present study keeping in view the dire need for stringent environmental policies intends to design a unique model that covers the major factors affecting the stringency of environmental policies today, like the geopolitical risk (GPR), economic growth (EG), resulting carbon emissions (CO2), increasing technological innovations (TIN), and rapid urbanization (URB) hindering or boosting the efforts of sustainability. The study examines the G7 countries from 1990 to 2020 in this regard. The study adds to the Theory of Public Choice by extending the concept to environmental-related variables. The study applies the Panel Quantile Regression (PQR) technique to obtain results intensively. The inferences show that GPR and increasing carbon emissions hinder the enforcement of stringent environmental policies. Conversely, TIN, EG, and URB are making environmental policies more stringent. In light of study outcomes, the authors put forward practically viable policy implications which are considered helpful in securing SDG 13 (climate change), SDG 09 (innovations), SDG 11 (sustainable cities and societies), SDG 16 (strong institutions), SDG 08 (decent economic growth), and directly and several other SDGs indirectly.