The Impact of Human Capital and Biocapacity on Environment Environmental Quality Measure through Ecological Footprint and Greenhouse Gases

摘要

It is important to note in growth-energy-environment nexus, the use of other environmental proxies like ecological footprint and greenhouse gases are getting more attention in recent years. Though carbon emission (CO2) has been mostly used to test the EKC hypothesis in the past years, it is irrational to capture the whole environmental degradation through CO2 emission only; as it is one pollutant indicator. This paper includes four proxies such as; ecological footprint (EF), carbon emission (CO2), Nitrous Oxide emission (N2O) and methane emission (CH4) to seizure the environmental quality. Thereby, this paper investigates the impact of human capital and biocapacity on the environment of BRICS economies by covering the period of 1991-2014. Empirical analysis of Kao, Westerlund, and Pedroni verify the presence of cointegration between the variables of the selected panel. Long run estimations of “Dynamic Seemingly Unrelated Regression (DSUR)” divulge the existence of an inverted U-shaped curve (EKC) for model 1, 2 and 4 while U-shaped association for model 3. Moreover, biocapacity (human capital) significantly contribute to environmental degradation in model 1and4 (3and4) while improve environmental quality significantly in model 2and3 (1and2). Energy consumption significantly enhancing the ecological footprint and GHGs emission. In addition, Granger causality tests confirm the bidirectional causal relationship between economic growth, biocapacity, human capital, and environmental degradation. Fascinatingly, long term estimations of individual country propose that China is the only country in which empirical analysis confirm the EKC hypothesis for all four models. Lastly, this paper provides some valuable policy inferences in the perspective of the sustainable environment in BRICS economies.