A multi-country convergence analysis of ecological footprint and its components

Abstract

This paper seeks to test the convergence of per capita ecological footprint and its six components which include the footprints of built up, carbon, crop land, fishing ground, forest land, and grazing land in 92 countries for the period 1961–2014. Due to the inadequacies of stationarity and unit root tests to examine convergence, which basically arise from the presence of more than one equilibrium relating to groups of countries treading diverse convergence paths, we implement a combination of two club convergence approaches in the analysis. The findings demonstrate 10 convergence clubs for ecological footprint and four convergence clubs for built-up footprint. There are five convergence clubs for carbon footprint, while there are seven convergence clubs for cropland footprint and two convergence clubs for fishing ground footprint. We discover whole panel convergence for forest land footprint and two convergence clubs for grazing land footprint. The post merging analysis suggests two convergence clubs for ecological footprint, while there are six convergence clubs for cropland footprint. The foregoing result imply that policies on the environment should take into consideration the unique convergence paths of each of the cluster countries for the aggregate ecological footprint indicator as well as its components.