Caring for the environment. How do deforestation, agricultural land, and urbanization degrade the environment? Fresh insight through the ARDL approach

Deforestation in various economies caused tremendous disintegration and crumbling effects on environmental sustainability and loss of forest habitats. However, developing economies face higher environmental degradation due to large-scale deforestation for urbanization. Therefore, our research is based on four separate models to investigate the effects of greenhouse gases (CO₂, CH₄, and N₂O) and ecological footprint on deforestation, urbanization, economic growth, globalization, and agricultural land in Pakistan. Hence, research data are grabbed from authentic sources like World Bank indicators, the Global Footprint Network, and the Swiss Economic institute. Further, the econometric methodology is employed to get long- and short-run dynamics through the autoregressive distributed lag model from 1990 to 2017 for Pakistan. Our empirical evidence suggests that carbon emissions expressed a significant positive linkage for deforestation, agriculture land, globalization, and urbanization that prompts long-term environmental degradation. Additionally, in the long run, ecological footprint developed a significant and positive bridge between deforestation, agriculture land, and economic growth. Moreover, the long-term findings concluded that methane gases surge deforestation, agriculture land, economic development, and globalization. However, a small ratio of nitrous oxide indicated a negative linkage between deforestation and agriculture land but a positive connection with economic growth, urbanization, and globalization. Moreover, the variance decomposition analysis and impulse response function examine the causality among the variables. For practical implications and policies, the government should formulate strict control on deforestation acts to save the environment and ecology. It should need to redesign urbanization policies with city and town planning. Policymakers should focus on advancements in the agriculture sector’s productivity. For emerging countries like Pakistan, besides reducing CO₂ emissions, policymakers should consider the reduction of methane and nitrous emissions.