Governance plays a significant role in attaining sustainable development. The recent significant increase in academic and research literature regarding the role of good governance in achieving sustainable development is the primary motivation for conducting this study. A bibliometric analysis of 8,193 documents published between 1992 and 2022 was conducted. The data was collected from the Web of Science (WoS) database and analyzed using Stata, VOSviewer, and Bibliometrix R-Package. The findings indicate that China has the highest share of publications, followed by the United Kingdom and the United States. The most productive institutions are the University of London, Wageningen University & Research and Utrecht University. Moreover, exploration on further research directions have been proposed, including rural revitalization, smart agriculture, environmental quality, green economy, green finance and innovation. Besides, future research could focus more on big data-driven intelligence governance. Integrating modern technologies- big data, artificial intelligence and the internet of things- is crucial for achieving sustainable development and environmental protection and thus accomplishing the sustainable development goals (SDGs) by 2030.