Abstract. Over the last few decades, atmospheric dioxide emissions have been amplified to a great extent in India. It is happening due to environmental degradation, and sustainability concerns have also increased globally. It happens due to a lack of education, the depletion of natural resources, and the growth of the economy, which can lead to severe threats to the environment. To study this issue, the present study examines the phenomena in which way natural resources, human capital, and economic growth are affected by two important indicators, like the ecological footprint and CO2 emissions in India. The present study leverages the dynamic autoregressive distributed lag (DARDL) approach and uses annual data from 1986 to 2021. The empirical results show that long-run human capital, and natural resources have a negative relationship with CO2 emissions but economic growth has a positive relationship with CO2 emissions. In the short run, human capital and economic growth have a positive relationship with CO2 emissions whereas natural resources have a negative relationship with ecological footprints. Moreover, creating awareness among the citizens together with governmental regulatory pressures might help in solving the problems related to the environment, resulting in preserving the sustainability of future generations in India.

Keywords: human capital, natural resources, economic growth, ecological footprint, carbon emission, DARDL model.