Greening the Economy: How Forest-Product Trade and Bioenergy Shape the Framework for Green Growth

Green growth aims to foster economic development while ensuring environmental sustainability by optimizing resource use and reducing pollution. Despite growing attention, the nexus between forest trade, bioenergy, and green growth remains underexplored. Therefore, the main aim of this study is to investigate the impact of forest trade and bioenergy on green growth. To that end, we apply cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lag (CS-ARDL) using 33 global economies. The findings of the CS-ARDL show that forest trade helps enhance green growth both in the short- and long run. However, bioenergy significantly boosts green growth only in the long run, while the short-run estimate of bioenergy is insignificant. The estimates of the regional analysis signify that forest trade and bioenergy enhance green growth in both developed and developing economies only in the long run. Policymakers in both developed and emerging economies should focus on boosting forestry trade and promoting bioenergy production to stimulate green growth.