Abstract:
The improper allocation of economic and environmental resources damages the United Nations sustainable development Agenda, which remains a challenge for policymakers to stop the rot through efficient governance mechanisms. The study designed an efficient environmental governance framework by extending the different governance factors linked to the environmental sustainability ratings in the cross-section of 67 countries. The results of
the two-regime based estimator show that environmental corruption (regime-1), environmental politics (regime2), and environmental laws (regime-2) negatively correlated with the environmental sustainability rating, whereas
environmental democracy (regime-1 & 2) positively correlated with the environmental sustainability agenda across
countries. The government effectiveness and the country's per capita income both escalates environmental sustainability ratings. The results align with the Demopolis theory, the effective regulatory theory, and the theory of law
and politics. The causality estimates show that environmental corruption and government effectiveness causes
environmental politics and economic growth. In contrast, environmental democracy and environmental regulations
cause a country's per capita income. The bidirectional causality is found between environmental regulations and
environmental corruption on the one hand, while environmental regulations and environmental politics Granger
cause each other on the other hand. The results show the importance of environmental regulations in managing
