Implications of Environmental Convergence: Continental Evidence Based on Ecological Footprint

Recently seminal articles in the literature have been investigating the issues of air pollution and convergence in air pollution by following CO2 emissions. These seminal works eventually suggest some prominent environmental policies. This paper aims at (i) following a new, more comprehensive ecological indicator than CO2 indicator, which is called ecological footprint (EF), and, (ii) observing if countries of four continents converge in EF indicator. The continents are Asia, Africa, America and Europe, respectively. This work eventually suggests some relevant environmental policies. EF compares the demand side and supply side of the natural resources. The EF, on the demand side, calculates the amount of human's consumption of natural resources and amount of waste from the consumption of resources. The EF indicator, on the supply side, measures how quickly nature can absorb people's waste and how quickly new resources can be created by nature. EF considers the global warming in a broader framework by following effects of land use, deforestation carbon emissions on climate change. The CO2, hence, the greenhouse gas, is accounted for in ecological footprint measurement. Ecological footprint (i) presents an aggregated indicator considering separately the indicators of carbon dioxide emissions, collapse of fisheries, change in land use, and, deforestation, and, (ii) tracks the human activities-driven pressures on ecosystems and biodiversity. Therefore, ecological footprint might be followed to understand, in an integrated manner, the environmental impacts of the humans' activities on the biosphere and its composing ecosystems. To this end, a bootstrap-based panel KPSS test with structural breaks is carried out to determine whether or not environmental convergence happens for 15 countries of each continent. The continents are Asia, Africa, America and Europe, respectively. Results show that convergence in EF is verified in Africa, America and Europe whereas null hypothesis of convergence is rejected in Asia. Following the panel estimations, this paper eventually aims at exploring some environmental policies regarding sustainable urbanization, efficient water usage and optimization in land and forest management