Moving towards a sustainable environment: The dynamic linkage between natural resources, human capital, urbanization, economic growth, and ecological footprint in China

By Zahoor Ahmed, M. M. Asghar, Muhammad Nasir Malik, Kishwar Nawaz. Resources policy, 2020

1,078 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract The relationship between natural resource abundance and environmental degradation has important environmental implications. However, this domain is insufficiently investigated, and diverse findings are evident in the literature. The significant economic growth, along with rapid urbanization and industrialization, has increased the extraction and consumption of natural resources in China. Therefore, this study investigates the effect of natural resources abundance, human capital, and urbanization on the ecological footprint in China, controlling economic growth. The study uses the famous Bayer and Hack cointegration test, and bootstrap causality technique to study cointegration and causal association among variables. The findings of the study confirm the long-run equilibrium relationship among variables. The long-run results reveal that natural resource rent increases the ecological footprint. Urbanization and economic growth contribute to environmental degradation, whereas human capital mitigates environmental deterioration. Interestingly, the interaction between urbanization and human capital helps in alleviating environmental degradation, which indicates a moderating effect of human capital in promoting sustainable urbanization. The estimates of the bootstrap causality method disclose unidirectional causality from natural resources to the ecological footprint. Urbanization also Granger-causes ecological footprint without any feedback. The results are also compared and verified using carbon footprint as an additional proxy for environmental degradation. Lastly, comprehensive policy measures are proposed to improve environmental quality.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5ff642af8047bda3b98c0a54ed70edb7db552ec7

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. G. B. Amegavi
2. Z. Langnel
3. E. Achuo
4. Munir Ahmad
5. Q. Syed
6. P. Donkor
7. Tii N. Nchofoung
8. Simplice A. Asongu

In Environmental Engineering

1. G. B. Amegavi
2. Z. Langnel
3. Munir Ahmad
4. Q. Syed
5. P. Donkor
6. Simplice A. Asongu
7. Hooi Hooi Lean
8. Andrew Adewale Alola

In Pollution

1. Simplice A. Asongu
2. Hooi Hooi Lean
3. Andrew Adewale Alola
4. Muhammad Khalid Anser

Citations in the corpus

• Income inequality, human capital, natural resource abundance, and ecological footprint in ECOWAS member countries (2021, positive): “Furthermore, economic growth and associated urbanization and industrialization trends facilitate demand for natural resource extraction (Ahmed et al., 2020), and a large amount of natural resource consumption, mostly through agriculture, deforestation, mining, and industrialization is inextricably…”
• Do Economic Policy Uncertainty and Geopolitical Risk Lead to Environmental Degradation? Evidence from Emerging Economies (2021, methodology): “One the other hand, urbanization decreases the EF whereas human capital contributes to higher EF in G-7 countries [37].”