ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Economics and Management
Moderating Roles of Green Technologies and Trade Diversification in Resource-Driven Ecological Pressures: Evidence from G-20 Economies Using a Panel MMQR Approach
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Public Administration, Yanshan, China
- 2Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, China
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The ecological consequences of natural resource dependence and energy exploitation are drawing increasing global concern, particularly under the accelerating pressures of climate change. This study explores the direct and moderating effects of trade openness, trade diversification, and environmental technologies on the relationship between natural resource rents and ecological sustainability in G-20 economies from 1990 to 2023. Employing the Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) approach, the analysis uncovers heterogeneous impacts across the distribution of the ecological footprint. The results indicate that natural resource rents significantly intensify ecological pressures, with stronger effects observed in highly polluted economies than in cleaner ones. Moreover, greater diversification in resource extraction is found to exacerbate environmental degradation, rather than mitigate it, by broadening the scale of resource use. In contrast, environmental technologies consistently and robustly reduce ecological footprints across all quantiles, underscoring their critical role in promoting sustainability transitions. Trade openness further supports ecological sustainability by amplifying the positive effects of environmental innovation while moderating the negative impacts of resource dependence. Robustness checks using Granger causality analysis confirm bidirectional links between ecological footprint, natural resource rents, diversification, and environmental technologies, while GDP and trade openness display unidirectional causal effects. These findings emphasize that reducing dependence on resource rents, expanding renewable energy adoption, and accelerating the diffusion of clean technologies are essential strategies for G-20 nations to align economic growth with long-term ecological sustainability.
Keywords: ecological footprint, natural resource rents, Trade Diversification, Environmental technologies, Trade openness, G-20, MMQR
Received: 15 Sep 2025; Accepted: 05 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li and Du. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zhizhou Du
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