The impact of natural resource abundance on ecological footprint: evidence from Algeria

The relationship between natural resources and the ecological footprint is a debate issue and shows inconclusive results. Therefore, the present study attempts to examine the role of natural resource abundance in shaping Algeria’s ecological footprint over the period 1970–2018 using autoregressive distributed lags (ARDL) and quantile-on-quantile regression (QQR). Empirical findings from the ARDL technique suggest that natural resource rents, GDP per capita, gross fixed capital formation, and urbanization increase ecological footprint. The QQR methodology, however, provided more insightful and in-depth findings compared to those of the ARDL. Interestingly, the findings of the QQR uncovered that while the impact of natural resources on ecological footprint is positive and substantial at the middle and upper quantiles, it gets weaker at the lower quantiles. This further implies that the over-extraction of natural resources would generate impacts on environmental degradation, while lesser natural resource extraction appears to be less detrimental to the environment. The QQR also reveals that economic growth, gross fixed capital formation, and urbanization have a positive effect on the ecological footprint in the majority of quantiles, with the exception of the lower quantiles of urbanization, where the effect is negative, indicating that the lowest degree of urbanization improved environmental quality in Algeria. Policymakers in Algeria are urged to pay critical attention to the management of the country’s natural resources, promote renewable energy sources, and develop public awareness to secure environmental sustainability.