Abstract

Environmental sustainability is a critical global challenge for Saudi Arabia. While geopolitical risks and corruption significantly impact sustainability, their specific effects within a single-country context remain underexplored. To address this gap, this study uses dynamic autoregressive distributed lag simulations and kernel-based regularized least squares estimation to examine the influence of geopolitical risk, corruption, natural resource rents, and economic growth on Saudi Arabia’s environmental sustainability from 1990 to 2021. The findings reveal that geopolitical risk negatively affects environmental sustainability in the short term, but Saudi Arabia’s economic resilience and policy responses mitigate its long-term impact. Conversely, corruption consistently deteriorates environmental sustainability by increasing carbon emissions and widening the short- and long-term ecological footprint. Additionally, economic growth and natural resource rents exacerbate environmental degradation. These findings underscore the urgent need for Saudi policymakers to strengthen anti-corruption measures, promote economic diversification, and reduce dependence on natural resource rents to achieve long-term environmental sustainability.