Oil exploration, biocapacity, and ecological footprint in Saudi Arabia.

Many countries encounter environmental imbalance where the ecological footprint is higher than biocapacity due to natural resource-induced economic growth. This paper focuses on Saudi Arabia, a prominent oil exporter, to assess the dynamic impact of oil extraction on ecological footprint and biocapacity by applying the quantile on quantile (QQ) approach. This empirical investigation demonstrates that a higher quantile of oil extraction is negatively associated with a lower quantile of ecological footprint; conversely, a lower quantile of oil extraction and a higher quantile of ecological footprint are positively associated. Additionally, a lower quantile of oil extraction and lower quantile of biocapacity are negatively associated. The empirical analysis confirms that oil extraction is somewhat less responsible higher score of ecological footprint due to efficient management in oil extraction and refinery process. Several policy implications of these findings are highlighted.

Re-visiting environmental Kuznets curve: role of scale, composite, and technology factors in OECD countries.

This study assesses environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis corroborating the role of scale, composite, and technology effects in OECD countries. To this end, we analyze the panel time series data from 1980 to 2017 using cross-sectional-autoregressive distributed lags (CS-ARDL). We document that economic growth and carbon emissions follow a U-shaped relationship, contrary to the EKC hypothesis, which our analysis attributes to the substantial contributions of the industrial, manufacturing, and service sectors to GDP. Technological progress has a somewhat marginal impact in reducing carbon emissions through energy efficiency but is unable to validate the existence of EKC hypothesis.