Towards a Sustainable Environment: How Do Natural Resources, Human Capital, and Economic Growth Interact With Environmental Degradation in the Maghreb Countries?

ABSTRACT The objective of this article is to study the heterogeneous effect of the natural resources, the human capital, economic growth and the CO 2 emissions on the ecological footprint and the bio‐capacity in the Maghreb countries. For this purpose, the multiple linear regression models was used to present the country's specific results, which indicated that economic growth increases the ecological footprint and biocapacity in Mauritania and decreases the ecological footprint in Tunisia. In addition, the depletion of natural resources decreases the ecological footprint and increases biocapacity in Tunisia while in Morocco; the human capital reduces it which contributes to the environmental degradation. On the other hand, the population growth in Libya and Morocco increased biocapacity. The results of this study also revealed the presence of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) in Tunisia but not in the other Maghreb countries. Therefore, some measures and policies should be taken by the governments.