Impact of economic growth, international trade, and FDI on sustainable development in developing countries

The contradictory findings in the literature challenge the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC); the simultaneous achievement of economic growth and environmental sustainability in some developing countries provides hope for a more harmonious future. As the world seeks to navigate the path to sustainable development, our research aims at verifying the EKC and pollution-haven hypothesis on a panel data of 64 developing countries in the period 1990–2019. Our findings reveal that exports have a favorable impact on the sustainable development of these developing countries, whereas imports exert a detrimental influence. The impact of foreign direct investment inflows is intricate: their contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) demonstrates a positive correlation, while their involvement in gross capital formation exhibits a negative correlation with the sustainable development of developing countries. Conversely, we do not identify any significant relationships between factors such as GDP growth, GDP per capita growth, export growth, import growth, economy size, and the sustainable development of these developing countries.