Natural Resources, Urbanisation, Economic Growth and the Ecological Footprint in South Africa: The Moderating Role of Human Capital

Abstract

South Africa is the largest emitter of CO2 and arguably the most developed and urbanised country in Africa. The country currently harbours an ecological deficit territory which could be the outcome of economic expansion, urban explosion, unsustainable resource exploration and a low level of human development. After all, environmental distortions are mainly the outcome of human activities. This study is a maiden attempt to examine the linkage between urbanisation, human capital, natural resources (NR) and the ecological footprint (EF) in South Africa. Unlike previous studies, this study employs positivist and relevant environmental indicators that accommodate built-up land, forest land, carbon footprint, ocean, grazing land and cropland. Findings from the long-run results suggest that urbanisation, economic growth and NR increase the EF, whereas human capital ensures environmental sustainability. The interaction between urbanisation and human capital mitigates environmental degradation by reducing the EF. The canonical cointegrating regression (CCR), dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) and the fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) results further confirm the nature of the relationships and linkages existing with respect to NR, urbanisation, economic growth and the EF. A bidirectional causality exists between human capital, economic growth and the EF. Policies related to NR and urban sustainability, the limitations of the study, as well as possible directions for future research are discussed.

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Dynamic nexus between transportation, urbanization, economic growth and environmental pollution in ASEAN countries: does environmental regulations matter?

“…environment pollution affected urbanization negatively, and an inverted U Kuznets curve was found to exist between pollution and growth as well as between urbanization and environmental pollution (Liang and Yang 2019). Nathaniel (2021c) analyses the association among urbanization, economic growth, natural resources and ecological footprint for South Africa. In their views, urbanization decreases the agriculture activities which saves the environment from pollution and enhances the industrial activities in urban areas which is the major cause of pollution.…”

On the nexus between globalization, tourism, economic growth, and biocapacity: evidence from top tourism destinations

“…Also, the study finds that growing biocapacity affects ecological footprints negatively as Danish et al (2019) also find in their study that development in economic and biocapacity worsens Pakistan's ecological footprint, and Chu et al (2017), whose study confirmed that improvement of ecological improvement resulted from decreasing biocapacity in Beijing-Tianjin-Heibin region. Furthermore, increase in tourism-related activities, globalization, and economic production have the potential to damage the quality of the environment as evidenced from the research conducted by (Nathaniel 2021c) which stated that as tourism increases, consumption of energy also increases, thereby releasing toxic substances that damage the environmental quality.…”

“…Interestingly, as tourism is increasing, energy consumption is also increasing (fossil fuels) contributing to the emission of CO2 (Nathaniel 2021c;Balsalobre-Lorente et al, 2020;Ballie et al 2019;Gossling & Peeters, 2015). This is evident in transportation, accommodation, and other tourist activities directly or indirectly.…”

The effect of mineral saving and energy on the ecological footprint in an emerging market: evidence from novel Fourier based approaches

“…These are (i) economic growth, (ii) energy consumption, and (iii) globalization (Alper et al 2022). In addition, many studies consider natural resources while explaining the effect of economic growth on EF (Hassan et al 2019;Ahmed et al 2020;Hussain et al 2021;Nathaniel 2021;Zia et al 2021;Jahanger et al 2022).…”