Author(s): Mehak Kohli and Roop Lal Sharma
Following the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals, this study explored the impact of macroeconomic variables on carbon dioxide emissions. By considering the significance of symmetries and asymmetries, this study investigates the symmetric (linear) impact of poverty, income inequality, population, economic growth, renewable energy consumption, and urbanization on CO2 emissions in India, spanning the data from 1991 to 2019. To this end, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is used to examine the symmetric impact of the variables on the environment. The symmetric results of the current study show that poverty, economic growth, and urbanization increase carbon dioxide emissions in both the short run and long run but on the other side, there can be seen a mixed impact of income inequality, and population on the environment degradation. In light of these results, this study also suggested some policy implications regarding the United Nation’s sustainability development goals and future research avenues in the concluding section.