Does geopolitical risk impact sustainable development research? A perspective on linkage between geopolitical risk and sustainable development research

The impact of the geopolitical crisis radiates into the area of sustainable development, it has become a major challenge hindering the process of sustainable human development. Thorough research is necessary to determine how global geopolitical concerns affect sustainable development. Based on the methodology and paradigm of bibliometrics, this study incorporates the study of geopolitical influences on sustainable development into the analytical framework, creating and comparing structural changes in the field before and after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, and systematic basic research using data from relevant publications included in Web of Science core database. The results indicate that in recent years the study of geopolitical influences on sustainable development has attracted widespread interest among scientists and that the number of publications on the subject area has been on the rise, and environmental ecological sciences have become the most dominant subject area in the research field of the topic. The geographical distribution of publications shows that developed countries have more publications in this field. The evolution of the dynamics of international collaboration reveals heterogeneity in the patterns of state and author cooperation before and after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, a decrease in the clustering of state cooperation, and the replacement of the United States by China as the country with the highest intensity of cooperation in the aftermath of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, and author collaboration networks show a lack of high-impact author groups in the subject. Thematic clustering results show that geopolitical risks have impacts on economic, social, and environmental sustainability, which include impacts on economic development, energy security, global supply chains, the water environment, and many others. At the end of the article, we propose relevant suggestions for achieving sustainable development goals under geopolitical threats.