Kibria Md Golam
Department of Economics, Noakhali Science and Technology University, Noakhali-3814, Bangladesh.
Heliyon. 2023 Mar 27;9(4):e14747. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e14747. eCollection 2023 Apr.
Recent years have seen a spike in the number of academics utilizing the ecological footprint as a stand-in for environmental depletion because of its extensive nature and its ability to capture the worsening of the ecosystem. Thus, this article brings a new effort to analyze the effect of Bangladesh's economic complexity and natural resources on its ecological footprint over a long period, from 1995 to 2018. Using a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) model, this paper suggests that a more complex economy has a significantly positive effect on ecological footprint over the long term. If the economy is simplified, it has less impact on the environment. For Bangladesh, an increase in economic complexity of 1 unit leads to an ecological footprint increase of 0.13 units, while a drop in economic complexity of 1% causes an ecological footprint decrease of 0.41%. Results also demonstrate that both positive and negative changes in natural resources contribute to rises in environmental quality in Bangladesh, which negatively influences the country's ecological footprint. Quantitatively, a 1% increase in natural resources reduces the ecological footprint by 0.14%, whereas a 1% decrease in resources has the opposite effect, reducing it by 0.59%. In addition, an asymmetric Granger causality test confirms the existence of a unidirectional causal link from ecological footprint to a positive partial sum of natural resources and from a negative partial sum of natural resources to ecological footprint. Finally, the findings point to a two-way causal relationship between the size of an economy's ecological footprint and the complexity of its economy. Policymakers should boost technological advances and lessen operational costs by adopting an innovative Research and development framework and devoting more cash to natural resource policies that promote an adaptable ecological footprint.
近年来，由于生态足迹具有广泛的性质且能够反映生态系统的恶化情况，利用其作为环境损耗替代指标的学者数量激增。因此，本文做出新的努力，分析1995年至2018年长期以来孟加拉国经济复杂性和自然资源对其生态足迹的影响。运用非线性自回归分布滞后（NARDL）模型，本文表明，从长期来看，经济越复杂对生态足迹具有显著的正向影响。如果经济简化，对环境的影响就较小。对于孟加拉国而言，经济复杂性增加1个单位会导致生态足迹增加0.13个单位，而经济复杂性下降1%会使生态足迹减少0.41%。结果还表明，自然资源的正向和负向变化都会导致孟加拉国环境质量上升，这对该国的生态足迹产生负面影响。从数量上看，自然资源增加1%会使生态足迹减少0.14%，而资源减少1%则会产生相反的效果，使生态足迹减少0.59%。此外，非对称格兰杰因果检验证实存在从生态足迹到自然资源正向部分和从自然资源负向部分到生态足迹的单向因果联系。最后，研究结果表明经济的生态足迹规模与其经济复杂性之间存在双向因果关系。政策制定者应通过采用创新的研发框架并将更多资金投入到促进适应性生态足迹的自然资源政策中，推动技术进步并降低运营成本。
