Reassessing the Role of Resource Management on Sustainable Environment: Impacts of Taxation, Depletion, Renewable Energy, and Globalization

ABSTRACT The overexploitation and depletion of natural resources are negatively affecting ecosystems, endangering environmental sustainability and harming biodiversity. This undermines long‐term ecological balance, negatively impacting human quality of life and the well‐being of future generations. High resource tax increases the cost of non‐environmentally friendly practices, thus pushing companies toward more sustainable and environmentally friendly alternatives. Globalization has complex ecological effects by influencing countries' environmental policies, consumption patterns, and financing for clean technologies economically, socially, and politically. This study examines the impact of resource taxes, natural resource depletion, renewable energy transition, and globalization on the ecological footprint from 1994 to 2020 for 19 OECD countries using advanced panel data techniques, for example, cross‐sectionally augmented autoregressive‐distributed lag (CS‐ARDL) and dynamic common correlated effects (DCCE) estimators. Unlike prior studies that look at these factors separately, this research considers them together to better understand their overall impact on the environment. The study shows that resource taxes decrease the ecological footprint in Japan and Poland, while renewable energy transition reduces it in Germany, Ireland, Japan, and Portugal. Conversely, natural resource depletion increases environmental pollution in Belgium and Portugal, whereas globalization increases it in Austria. Collaboration should be encouraged to harmonize environmental policies and the transition to green energy across OECD countries.