In the construction and building industry, sustainable development is becoming a powerful force for economic, social, and environmental gains with fewer negative consequences for the environment. It is essential to establish green and sustainable practices in the building and construction industry in order to improve energy efficiency, particularly by utilising the newest green technologies. As a result, the study’s objectives are to first investigate the most relevant practices to be used for green building employment; second, evaluate the benefits produced by the execution of green building; and third, analyse the best practices of green building characteristics. The findings of this study showed that green buildings developed using energy-efficient systems and implementing sustainable practices can reduce energy consumption, as well as lower the cost of operating and maintaining these buildings in the long term. Meanwhile, the government’s role is essential to attracting more participants in implementing sustainable practices in the construction and building sector, especially through more stringent regulations and appealing incentives.

Achieving affordable and clean energy targets is essential for sustainable development and high-quality economic growth, in alignment with the United Nations Agenda 2030. Previous studies have examined the effects of clean and non-clean energy on economic growth, yet limited attention has been given to assessing the role of Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG—7) and its interaction with economic growth. This study employs pre- and post-estimation tests, selecting the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and Machine Learning (ML) approaches to evaluate the interconnectedness among SDG—7 indicators and economic growth using annual time series data from 1990 to 2023. The findings reveal that the ARDL model offers significant understanding into both short- and long-term relationships between the underlined variables. Notably, energy indicators, including access to electricity, energy intensity, installed renewable energy capacity, and international financial inflows, were found to substantially contribute to long-term economic growth. Additionally, the Granger causality test identified both bidirectional and unidirectional causal relationships, with most variables exhibiting unidirectional causality. To validate the ARDL results, this study applies ML techniques, including Random Forests (RF) and Generalized Additive Models (GAMs), as robustness checks. Using four ML evaluation metrics (Mean Squared Error, Root Mean Squared Error, R 2 , and Out-of-Bag Error), the model demonstrated 93.4 % accuracy. These novel findings for small, open economies highlight critical policy implications, emphasizing the strategic prioritization of SDG—7 to foster environmental sustainability and sustainable economic growth.

Solid Waste Management (SWM) is a multifaceted development issue that municipal authorities face, particularly in emerging nations like Malaysia. The population’s willingness to pay was determined using a double-bounded dichotomous choice approach to obtain responses for a finance mechanism to improve SWM services in Kuala Nerus. A structured questionnaire survey was conducted on 300 households, including all the major towns and villages. According to the bid questions, most respondents (72.48%) said they would be willing to pay RM2 for solid waste management in their area, and 27.52% were not willing to pay RM2. For bid2, 65.74% of the respondents were willing to pay RM4 for the solid waste management. As a result, 30.9% of respondents stated they did not want to pay for solid waste management in their area. The survey found that when the bid was high, the respondent’s WTP value decreased from 72.48% (bid1) to 65.74% (bid2). This research adds to the body of knowledge on a key aspect of the financing mechanism, WTP, for better SWM services. The findings will benefit efforts to build a long-term finance structure for waste management services in Kuala Nerus, Terengganu.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) aims to harmonise rules and regulations across many overlapping free trade agreements in the region in order to attract new members. It’s aims to strengthen Asean's relations with Australia, China, Japan, and New Zealand and made trade agreement's goal to create a contemporary, comprehensive, high-quality, and mutually advantageous economic cooperation that will help expand regional trade and investment while also contributing to the region's global economic growth and development. It does, however, confront a number of obstacles. Many people believe that the RCEP will be another low-quality regional trade agreement due to the inclusion of a flexibility concept and the 'ASEAN Way' of decision-making. The RCEP, on the other hand, gives all ASEAN members the opportunity to help establish the agenda for a regional agreement. As a result, despite its difficulties, ASEAN must make an effort to achieve an attractive RCEP in comparison to other regional agreements.