Nexus between mineral rents and environmental sustainability: The role of economic policy uncertainty

Abstract One of the most contentious issues discussed in international forums is environmental deterioration, which is seen as a major global problem. Consequently, while a number of carbon emission (CO 2 ) drivers have been covered in the literature so far, little is known about the moderating effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on the link between CO 2 emissions and mineral rent (MINR). Therefore, for the BRICS nations, this document serves as a representation of the earlier effort to investigate the moderating effect of EPU on the link between mineral rents and environmental deterioration. The aim of this study is to investigate the interaction effect of MINR and EPU on CO 2 for BRICS from 1990 to 2022. For this purpose, we use the panel autoregressive distributed lag model to ascertain the long‐ and short‐term effects of EPU and MINR on CO 2 . The long‐term findings imply that MINR increases 2. In contrast, the moderation effect of EPU aggravates the impact of MINR on emissions. This study makes policy recommendations for accomplishing sustainable development. The governments of these nations may solve the problem of environmental degradation by assuring political stability, adopting dependable macroeconomic policies, and creating policies that are so adaptable that they can be readily controlled or utilized to handle unforeseen environmental concerns in the future.