Determinants of ecological and carbon footprints to assess the framework of environmental sustainability in BRICS countries: A panel ARDL and causality estimation model

The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the effects of financial development, human capital, globalization, and renewable energy consumption on ecological and carbon footprint. For this purpose, the data was collected from four countries i.e. Brazil, Russia, India, and China for 20 years (1997-2016). The 20 years panel data collected for these countries was analyzed through "auto-regressive distributed lag" (ARDL). Findings of this study reveal that human capital is a significant positive determinant of environmental degradation in short run and long run while renewable energy consumption is a significant negative determinant of environmental degradation in short run and long run. Findings further reveal that globalization significantly reduces environmental degradation in short run and long run. Furthermore, findings show that the financial development significantly positively affects the environmental degradation in short run and long run. Therefore, renewable energy consumption and globalization are found to be negative predictors of ecological footprint and carbon footprint while human capital and financial development are found to be positive predictors of ecological footprint and carbon footprint. These findings are expected to be great contribution to the literature and practice, as they will help researchers and policymakers to realize the relative importance of energy, educational, economic, and trade policies in determining the environmental degradation.