The Impact of Globalization, Energy Use, and Trade on Ecological Footprint in Pakistan: Does Environmental Sustainability Exist?

Abstract

Globalization has contributed to several advances in technology including linking people around the globe and driving us to modern economies. With fast economic growth and industrialization progress, the negative impact of globalization on biodiversity can be easily ignored. Globalization is an undeniable factor in our planetary devastation from pollution to global warming and climate change. The major intention of our recent analysis was to examine the globalization, energy consumption, trade, economic growth, and fuel importation to determine the ecological footprint in Pakistan by taking the annual data variables from 1974–2017. A linear ARDL (autoregressive distributed lag) technique with limited information maximum likelihood and linear Gaussian model estimation were utilized to check the variables association. Outcomes show that in the long run, globalization, energy usage, trade, and GDP growth have consistently productive interactions with the ecological footprint, while an examination of fuel importation uncovers an adversative linkage to impacts on the ecological footprint in Pakistan. Similarly, the findings of short-run interactions also reveal that globalization, energy usage, trade, and GDP growth have constructive linkages; however, an examination of fuel importation also uncovers an adversative linkage to impacts on the ecological footprint. The outcomes of limited information maximum likelihood also expose that the variables of globalization, energy usage, trade, and fuel importation have productive linkages, while an examination the GDP growth uncovers an adversative linkage to the ecological footprint. Furthermore, the outcomes of the linear Gaussian model estimation also uncover that globalization and energy usage demonstrate a constructive linkage, while other variables reveal an adverse linkage to the ecological footprint. Environmental pollution is now an emerging issue which causes the climatic variations associated with greenhouse gases emissions. The Pakistani government must adopt new strategies to ensure that CO2 emissions are reduced in order to stimulate economic growth.