Demographic change effect on ecological footprint: A tripartite study of urbanization, aging population, and environmental mitigation technology

Abstract

This study examines the impact of disaggregated demographic changes on Russia's sustainable environment improvement and management. With expanded energy resources, high urbanization levels, accelerated industrialization, and tourism growth, Russia has become one of the world's most dynamic economies. Urbanization has accelerated deforestation in Russia and contributed to numerous environmental challenges. Urbanization explains demographic changes in the cities with respect to the increase in population sizes and structures due to rural-urban migration. On this note, this study adopts a population-environment-technology and development model to examine the sustainable environment of Russia. The model is extended to include environmental mitigation technology and financial development to buttress how to decarburise Russia's economy and environment and believes technological innovation and financial facilities via financial inclusion may help reduce environmental stress. Russia's data from 2000 to 2021 with different scientific approaches such as FMOLS, DOLS, CCR, and ARDL are employed to investigate the robust outcomes. Under the basic model, real income, urbanization, FDI and the rule of law significantly contribute to environmental damage. However, environmental mitigation technology (EMT) and financial inclusion perform well to mitigate environmental degradation. Due to the surprising role of EMT, this study also investigates EMT's mediating role on RI, urbanization and foreign direct investment. Consequently, the mediating role significantly contributes to the Russian economy's sustainability. In an extended form, other demographic features (population+15 and population+65) proved detrimental to the environmental development of Russia when analyzed with FMOLS. This is not far from the active engagement of the population in the bracket of the working population on the economic performance and the dependency ratio of the old population on the active and young population for survival. However, this study also employs the granger causality test, IPR and variance decomposition analysis for further validation. Following the outcomes, this study suggests some imperative implications to attain the desired sustainable level.