The impact of agriculture, energy consumption and economic growth on ecological footprint: testing the agriculture-induced EKC for Türkiye

The main purpose of the current study is to empirically analyze the impact of agriculture, energy consumption, and economic growth on environmental degradation in Türkiye for the period of 1968–2020. Against the backdrop, we tested agriculture-induced EKC hypothesis employing Ecological Footprint (EFP) instead of emissions because EFP better represents the sustainability. Our results from ARDL model indicate the validation of the EKC hypothesis for Türkiye. Hence environmental deterioration worsens with economic growth and improves with higher level of GDP. Moreover, increase in both the agricultural value added per capita and energy use per capita increases the EFP per capita. In other words, agricultural production, and energy usage are important drivers for environmental quality. The causality results show the presence of growth hypothesis between agriculture and GDP and energy-EFP for Türkiye. Therefore, government should envisage the policies towards sustainable economic growth as discussed under the conclusion part.