Pakistan Ecological Footprint and Major
Driving Forces, Could Foreign Direct
Investment and Agriculture Be Among?
Edmund Ntom Udemba
Abstract Pakistan economy is characterized with good economic performance with
agriculture and foreign direct investment (FDI) as pillars of the economy but remains
among top emission producing countries. This calls for investigation of the economy
with respect to its contribution toward climate change. Many indicators have been
proposed as the best measures of environment performance but less consideration to
ecological footprint as the right measure of environment, this current study adopts
ecological footprint as a proxy to environment performance. FDI and agriculture
are equally selected as among the variables in this study. Pakistan country specific
data from 1970 to 2018 was applied to this research for clear insight both in shortand long-run investigation. ARDL bound and granger causality tests were applied.
FDI and agriculture were found impacting ecological footprint negatively. Causal
transmission was found passing to ecological footprint from FDI. Nexus was found
among the selected variables pointing toward negative impact on ecological footprint.
Hence, pollution haven hypothesis was confirmed for Pakistan.
Keywords Economic growth · Energy use · FDI · Agriculture · PHH · Pakistan
1 Introduction
Ecological footprint as a measure of environmental degradation has been largely
overlooked mostly by the developing nations. Few scholars have adopted ecological
footprint as a measure to study environmental performance with little emphasis on
the meaning and correlation of ecological footprint and the quality performance of
environment. Misconception of the indicator has made some of the scholars to posit
ecological footprint as responsible for environmental deterioration. For clear insight
on the linkage of the ecological footprint with environment performance, it is necessary to consider the meaning of both over shooting of the Earth and ecological deficit.
E. N. Udemba (B)
Faculty of Economics Administrative and Social Sciences, Istanbul Gelisim University, Istanbul,
Turkey
e-mail: eudemba@gelisim.edu.tr; eddy.ntom@gmail.com
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
S. S. Muthu (ed.), Assessment of Ecological Footprints,
Environmental Footprints and Eco-design of Products and Processes,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0096-8_5
109
Driving Forces, Could Foreign Direct
Investment and Agriculture Be Among?
Edmund Ntom Udemba
Abstract Pakistan economy is characterized with good economic performance with
agriculture and foreign direct investment (FDI) as pillars of the economy but remains
among top emission producing countries. This calls for investigation of the economy
with respect to its contribution toward climate change. Many indicators have been
proposed as the best measures of environment performance but less consideration to
ecological footprint as the right measure of environment, this current study adopts
ecological footprint as a proxy to environment performance. FDI and agriculture
are equally selected as among the variables in this study. Pakistan country specific
data from 1970 to 2018 was applied to this research for clear insight both in shortand long-run investigation. ARDL bound and granger causality tests were applied.
FDI and agriculture were found impacting ecological footprint negatively. Causal
transmission was found passing to ecological footprint from FDI. Nexus was found
among the selected variables pointing toward negative impact on ecological footprint.
Hence, pollution haven hypothesis was confirmed for Pakistan.
Keywords Economic growth · Energy use · FDI · Agriculture · PHH · Pakistan
1 Introduction
Ecological footprint as a measure of environmental degradation has been largely
overlooked mostly by the developing nations. Few scholars have adopted ecological
footprint as a measure to study environmental performance with little emphasis on
the meaning and correlation of ecological footprint and the quality performance of
environment. Misconception of the indicator has made some of the scholars to posit
ecological footprint as responsible for environmental deterioration. For clear insight
on the linkage of the ecological footprint with environment performance, it is necessary to consider the meaning of both over shooting of the Earth and ecological deficit.
E. N. Udemba (B)
Faculty of Economics Administrative and Social Sciences, Istanbul Gelisim University, Istanbul,
Turkey
e-mail: eudemba@gelisim.edu.tr; eddy.ntom@gmail.com
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
S. S. Muthu (ed.), Assessment of Ecological Footprints,
Environmental Footprints and Eco-design of Products and Processes,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0096-8_5
109