Investigating the relationship between economic growth and ecological footprint in Egypt

The paper aims to investigate the relationship between Economic growth and Ecological footprint in Egypt for a time series from 1971-2022. The study adopts unit root tests, granger causality tests and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) tests to analyze the relationship between six variables, Ecological Footprint measured by (gha), Economic growth measured by GDP (current US$), Total natural resources rents measured by (% of GDP), Gross capital formation as a% of GDP, Inflation measured by GDP deflator, unemployment measured by total (%of total labor force) National Estimate. Main findings; GDP has a significant and positive relationship to the ecological footprint in the long and short run, which means if the GDP of Egypt increases by (0.61%) the ecological footprint will increase by (1%) in the short run. Natural resources rent has a significant negative relationship with Ecological footprint in the short run and a significant positive relationship in the long run. Gross capital formation has an insignificant relationship to Ecological footprint in the short run, whereas it has a significant positive relationship to Ecological footprint in the long run. Both unemployment and Inflation, have an insignificant relationship to ecological footprint in the short run, and only Unemployment has a significant negative relationship to Ecological footprint in the long run. Egypt can achieve economic growth without depleting the environment in both the long and short run by letting both the private sector and government develop and implement technology that decreases pollution while permitting continuous economic expansion, aided by public policies that range …