Industry 4.0 and Sustainable Development: The Role of Green Production Practices and R&D on Green Growth: Policy Framework for Achieving Sustainable Development Goals

ABSTRACT Economic growth has always remained a driving force for economic development. But in the relentless pursuit of development, the climate has paid a heavy price globally and turned into a crisis. To mitigate environmental damage, the path forward is a clear green growth, and this is the only way to prosper both responsibly and sustainably. However, the proper implementation of green production practices (GPP), which is considered one of the vital factors of green growth, is lagging behind. The adoption of GPP alone remains insufficient to add to the green growth. Hence, the current study focuses on the role of research and development (R&D) to reap the benefits of GPP for green growth. Following Sarkodie et al. the notion of green growth (GGR) by linking economic growth with a sustainable environment is examined for a panel of five of the world's most polluted countries using Panel Quantile Regression (PQR) technique during 2001–2020. The findings reveal that the independent effect of adopting GPP is not enough in obtaining GGR; rather, a negative impact of GPP is observed specifically in the early and last quantiles. However, the interaction effect of GPP with R&D offsets the negative impact of GPP and enhances GGR. Based on empirical outcomes, this study proposes a comprehensive policy framework for attaining sustainable development goals (SDGs), such as SDG 12 (sustainable production), SDG 13 (climate change), SDG 08 (decent economic growth), and SDG 09 (innovations).