GIS-BASED REGRESSION ANALYSIS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF SELECTED COUNTRIES
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21837/pm.v16i7.513Keywords:
ecological footprint, economic development, sustainability, regression analysisAbstract
Ecological footprint is an innovative concept to present the consumption of natural resources and generation of waste in terms of the Earth biological carrying capacity in a standardized format. The Earth overall sustainability can also be measured with the idea of ecological footprint and bio-capacity. The aim of this paper is to analyse the interactive spatial relationship between economic development and ecological footprints of selected nations. The GIS-based spatial regression tool Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) are used for fulfilling the purpose. Individual components ofecological footprints - cropland, grazing land, fishing ground, forest land, builtup land and carbon footprints - are also analysed against the per capita GDP of the nations in order to understand the interrelationship between them. The analysis has found a significant relationship between ecological footprint and economic development and the OLS model can explain approximately 64% of the variation in the dependent variable with the explanatory variables. The study has also found that nation’s economic development contributes much in
increasing the carbon footprint. The resulted outcome is significant enough to warrant a study on the spatial dimension of environment and economy in order to analyse the individual nation’s economic growth and its relationship with environmental degradation, which can ultimately influence the global environmental sustainability
Downloads
References
Anselin, L. (1998). GIS research infrastructure for spatial analysis of real estate markets. Journal of Housing Research, 9(1), 113-133.
Callicott, J. B., & Mumford, K. (1997). Ecological sustainability as a conservation concept. Conservation Biology, 11(1), 32-40.
Lin, D., Hanscom, L., Martindill, J., Borucke, M., Cohen, L., Galli, A.,...& Wackernagel, M. (2016). Working Guidebook to the National Footprint Accounts: 2016 Edition. Oakland: Global Footprint Network.
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment [MEA]. (2005). Ecosystems and human well-being: Synthesis. Washington, DC: Island Press. thematicmapping (n.d.). World borders dataset. Retrieved February 10, 2017 from http://thematicmapping.org/downloads/world_borders.php
Venetoulis, J., & Talberth, J. (2008). Refining the ecological footprint. Environment Development and Sustainability, 10, 441-469.
Wackernagel, M., Monfreda, C., Moran, D., Wermer, P., Goldfinger, S., & Deumling, D. (2005). National footprint and biocapacity accounts 2005: The underlying calculation method. Land Use Policy, 21, 231-246.
Wang, Y., Kang, L., Wu, X., & Xiao, Y. (2013). Estimating the Environmental Kuznets curve for ecological footprint at the global level: A spatial econometric approach. Ecological Indicators, 34, 15-21.
World Bank (2017). GINI index (World Bank estimate). Retrieved February 10, 2017 from http://data. worldbank.org /indicator/SI.POV.GINI
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright & Creative Commons Licence
eISSN: 0128-0945 © Year. The Authors. Published for Malaysia Institute of Planners. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.
The authors hold the copyright without restrictions and also retain publishing rights without restrictions.
