Human well-being versus ecological footprint in MENA countries: A trade-off?
How to improve environmental quality and achieve human development remains major sustainability issues, particularly in the MENA region (the Middle East and North Africa). Most of the empirical literature fails to consider human well-being and environmental quality together although these concepts are fundamentally similar in their concern for distributive justice. This inquiry uses panel data for 13 MENA countries over the period 1990-2016 to examine the association between human development and ecological footprint and test whether trade-off nexus holds between these two sustainability-based indicators. To increase the policy relevance of this inquiry, the MENA region is divided into two sub-groups of countries: seven oil exporting countries and six non-oil exporting countries. The highlights pointed out the presence of a strong trade-off between the ecological footprint and human well-being captured by human development index for the whole sample and across the two subsamples. The crucial role played by economic institutions may help the MENA countries to mitigate the trade-offs to achieve simultaneously both targets of human well-being and environmental protection. Our empirical insights have important implications for achieving human development sustainability through the pursuit of the individual SDG targets.
['Kassouri|Yacouba|Y|', 'Altıntaş|Halil|H|']
D000352:Africa, Northern D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources D006801:Humans D008877:Middle East D057766:Policy
Human well-being Ecological footprint MENA countries Trade-off Human development index Sustainable development goals