The role of technological innovation, economic policy uncertainty, and poverty reduction in attaining environmental sustainability agenda: contextual evidence from developing South and East Asian Economies

Mitigating poverty and ecological destruction signifies vital challenges to comprehend sustainable growth and development. Extensive pragmatic studies have inspected these challenges within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) framework. Nevertheless, it is important to distinguish that the intensifying problem of environmental deterioration establishes a significant impediment to accomplishing SDGs and minimizing poverty. The prime objective of the present analysis is to identify the association between ecological footprint, poverty, and economic policy uncertainty within the situation of developing Asian economies. Global warming and climatic issues have recently become a persistent and critical worldwide concern. Notably, the demesne of energy and environmental literature has not recently undertaken an inclusive investigation of the complications of economic policy uncertainty with combating poverty policies on ecological footprint. The current analysis identifies the research gap, which investigates the link between poverty, GDP growth, the uncertainty of economic policies, energy consumption, technological changes, and population growth for developing South-East Asian economies from 1996 to 2018. The STIRPAT model and CS-ARDL approach were used for modeling, and for robustness check, the FMOLS test was applied. The causality estimation outcomes of the Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel revealed a two-way association among numerous important variables, namely ecological footprint with energy consumption, poverty, economic growth, economic policy uncertainty, and technological innovation. Based on these comprehensive results, we offer substantial policy suggestions. For policy implications, this analysis investigates many elements to propose strategies and promote environmentally sustainable goals, such as sustainable growth initiatives, poverty reduction, adoption of clean energy sources, enhancement of technological innovation, and mitigating ecological humiliation in the Asian region. This study makes various significant influences by reconnoitering the EKC in the context of these developing economies and proposing insights into strategies to fight ecological destruction.