Global Research Trends in Sustainability and Environmental Issues: A Sustainable Environment and Future Directions

Global rapid economic growth is a cause of significant environmental issues threatening the welfare of current and future generations in the 21st century. The issues show the need for sustainable environmental development, which correlates with the importance of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) program. Therefore, this research aimed to identify and examine global trends in sustainability and environmental issues, as published in Scopus-indexed journals from 1982 to 2022. Data on sustainability and environmental issues over the past 40 years were collected from the Scopus database. These included 1,324 English-language documents examined through bibliometric analysis performed with VOSviewer. The analysis explored the evolution of publications over time, categorized by classification, citations, subject areas, document types, authors, countries, institutions, journals, documents, and keywords. The results provided insights and discussions on sustainability and environment investigations, guiding future publications. This research would serve as a resource for scholars interested in collaborative projects in environmental sustainability, facilitating the exchange of ideas and results with academics, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government agencies, and other stakeholders. The objective was to provide practical directions for advancing sustainability to ensure long-term social resilience and planetary health.