Abstract
The extractive industries played a vital role in the country's economic development through the production of valuable products; however, due to limited access to global R & D spending and technical cooperation grants, this sector mainly faces severe sustainable resource extraction issues leads to air pollution. This study examines the role of technical cooperation grants in mineral resource extraction by controlling R&D spending, renewable energy demand, population density, and forest area in a panel of 12 resource-abundant economies from 1995 to 2018. The results show that technical cooperation grants and R & D spending are both positive and significant predictors of mineral resource extraction, while renewable energy demand, population density, and forest area negatively influence mineral resource extraction at different quantiles distribution. The Granger causality estimates confirmed the feedback relationship between R&D expenditures (and renewable energy demand) and mineral resource extraction, while there exist one-way linkages between forest area (and technical cooperation grants) and mineral resource extraction across countries. The study concluded that technical cooperation grants and R & D spending are vital for mineral resource extraction, which are likely to congregate the challenges of air pollution through technology-led R & D spending and global technical cooperation among countries.