Tourism, urbanization and natural resources rents matter for environmental sustainability: The leading role of AI and ICT on sustainable development goals in the digital era

In the era of development, the world is facing severe challenges, and environmental degradation is one of them. However, the globe has tried to introduce several initiatives to fight for environmental sustainability, such as the Sustainable Development Goals. The leading role of the proposed goals is to balance development and environmental anxiety. Therefore, to these issues, artificial intelligence and technological advancements play a vital role in the natural resource economy in the digital age. Policy analysts are always looking for solutions and have come up with several viable remedies to this problem. Consequently, information & communication technology (ICT) plays a significant role in sustainability in the digital era. However, under the theme of natural resource sustainability, the effectiveness of ICT has a significant impact on sustainability. Accordingly, the current study investigates the long-run effect of income per capita, tourism, natural resources rents, urbanization, and ICT on environmental sustainability in 36 OECD economies from 2000 to 2018. The current research employs an Augmented Mean Group (AMG) and two-step GMM to investigate the study's objectives. Results show the positive contribution of urbanization, natural resources, and tourism to CO2 emissions, while ICT reduces emissions. Besides, an inverted EKC curve is also validated for selected economies. In addition, the moderate effect of ICT on urbanization, natural resources, and tourism shows a significant decline in CO₂ emissions. In light of the findings, this study recommends several crucial measures for environmental sustainability.