Sustainability paradox in South Asia driven by agriculture, natural resources, and energy transitions shaping ecological footprints

In South Asia, rapid economic growth and structural transformation intensify environmental pressures and ecological degradation with limited decoupling. This study examines how agricultural activity, natural resource dependence, and disaggregated energy use jointly influence the ecological footprint in South Asian economies from 1960 to 2024, with the effective sample limited to five countries over twenty-five years due to data availability. Based on the STIRPAT framework, this paper applies PCCE/CS-ARDL, Mean Group, and Driscoll-Kraay estimators to account for heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence. The study yields three key findings. First, renewable energy robustly decreases ecological footprint (MG and DKSE), indicating that substitution effects dominate scale effects. Second, agricultural value added is not statistically significant; however, its interaction with natural resource rents is positive and significant, indicating that resource-driven agricultural expansion amplifies ecological pressure (resource curse). Third, natural resource rents alone have no significant effect, whereas non-renewable energy and population growth yield robust null results. This finding highlights the South Asian sustainability paradox: clean energy mitigates ecological stress, whereas resource-linked agricultural growth reinforces it. Thus, environmental outcomes come from interactions among agriculture, energy use, and natural resources. Therefore, effective policy requires accelerating renewable energy transitions, promoting sustainable agriculture practices, and strengthening governance of natural resource rents, thereby ensuring long-run ecological sustainability.