A drain or drench on biocapacity? Environmental account of fertility, marriage, and ICT in the USA and Canada

Abstract

In either case of ecological and biocapacity surplus or deficit, the precautionary effort toward optimizing the natural capital posits a potential framework for environmental sustainability. In studying the environmental account of fertility, marriage, and technological advancement in the USA and Canada, the autoregressive distributed lad-bound testing is employed over the experimental period 1990-2014. Importantly, the study revealed that the interaction of fertility and marriage exerts a significant and negative impact of biocapacity in both the USA and Canada and in short run and long run. Moreover, while the impact of energy use in both countries is significant and positive in both the short and long run, the magnitude of the impact is almost negligible. Similarly, an improvement in technological advancement in the countries is empirically observed to cause a decline in the biocapacity in both the long and short term. These posit that both energy use and technological advancement in Canada and the USA do not necessarily improve the productive capacity of the countries ecosystems. In general, the study provides policy frameworks for stakeholders toward addressing the environmental peculiarity of the USA (a biocapacity debtor) and Canada (a biocapacity creditor).