Abstract
The economic and environmental structures of countries are greatly impacted by domestic and foreign conflicts. To promote sustainable development, it is crucial to understand the spatial impact of these conflicts on the ecological footprint of a region. With a focus on Middle Eastern and African countries, this paper investigates the impact of such conflicts on their environments, taking into consideration the unique spatial features of their ecological footprints. Using a spatial econometric model, the study assesses the contributions of ecological footprint determinants, particularly internal and external conflict indicators, across 46 Middle Eastern and African countries from 2001 to 2019. The results indicate that internal conflict can lead to increased pressure on natural resources and ecological systems in neighboring countries, while energy use and economic growth impose a significant ecological burden both domestically and abroad. While urbanization and resource rents were found to reduce the ecological footprint, trade openness was found to be nonsignificant. Conflicts such as war, foreign pressure, civil war, and civil disorder were found to have a significant negative impact on the environment, suggesting that reducing these conflicts would improve environmental circumstances. The findings highlight the need for conflict resolution measures to achieve a sustainable environment in the Middle Eastern and African regions and have implications for other countries facing similar issues.
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Table 1 summarizes the source of the data used. The analysis was performed in Matlab.
Notes
Ecological footprint estimates the biologically productive surface areas of nature needed to support human consumption.
The share of military expenditure of GDP in other Middle Eastern and African countries reported between top 15 worldwide countries are: Algeria: 6%, Kuwait: 5.6%, Israel: 5.3%, Jordan:4.7%, Lebanon: 4.2%, Bahrain: 3.7%, Iraq: 3.5%, and South Sudan: 3.4%.
Mustard gas deteriorates the growth and reproduction of soil. This chemical weapon, along with nerve agents were used by Saddam Husein to genocide the Kurds, the biggest nation without a state, in Halabja in 1988.
Agent-Orange is a powerful herbicide that defoliates crops and forest cover and was used by the USA during the Vietnam War.
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Mohsen Khezri and Jamal Mamkhezri are listed as co-first authors. Conceptualization (Mohsen Khezri, Jamal Mamkhezri, and Somayeh Razzaghi), data curation (Mohsen Khezri and Somayeh Razzaghi), formal analysis (Mohsen Khezri), methodology (Mohsen Khezri and Jamal Mamkhezri), resources (Jamal Mamkhezri), software (Mohsen Khezri), supervision (Jamal Mamkhezri), validation (Mohsen Khezri, Jamal Mamkhezri, and Somayeh Razzaghi), writing—original draft (Mohsen Khezri, Jamal Mamkhezri, and and Somayeh Razzaghi), writing—review and editing (Jamal Mamkhezri).
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Khezri, M., Mamkhezri, J. & Razzaghi, S. Regional and spatial impacts of external and internal conflicts on ecological footprint: the case of Middle East and Africa. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 63631–63646 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-26692-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-26692-0