Investigating Long-Term Impact of Agricultural Factors and Renewable Energy on Environmental Quality: Evidence from Indonesia Using ARDL and DOLS

Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions and the ecological footprint are among the major causes of environmental degradation and climate change, a real challenge to sustainable development. This paper examines how agricultural and economic variables influence environmental quality in Indonesia in the short and long run from 1991 to 2022. The analysis is based on an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach, using annual time series data to explore dynamic interconnections among environmental indicators, agricultural land, agricultural value-added, renewable energy consumption, and gross domestic product (GDP). Evidence was found that expanding agricultural land contributes to rising CO 2 emissions and ecological footprints in the long run. In contrast, renewable energy and GDP had negative long run effects on both CO 2 emissions and the ecological footprint. Agricultural value-added did not show a significant long-run effect on CO 2 emissions but exhibited a significant positive effect on the ecological footprint. However, agricultural land and value-added contribute to CO 2 emissions and ecological footprint reductions in the short run. Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) is employed to confirm the reliability of the long-run findings, enhancing the consistency of the results. Granger results showed unidirectional predictive relationships from agricultural land, GDP per capita, and renewable energy consumption to both environmental indicators, while the environmental indicators predicted agricultural value-added. Overall, the findings provide empirical evidence of agricultural development, renewable energy utilization, and economic growth impacts on Indonesia's environmental sustainability.