Agriculture, institutions, and ecological pressure in South Asian countries

South Asian countries face rising ecological pressure linked to demographic change, economic growth, agricultural transformation, and uneven institutional capacity. This study examines how food production, agricultural value added, crop yield, carbon intensity, government effectiveness, rule of law, economic development, and population are associated with ecological footprint per capita in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka over 2000–2024 within an extended STIRPAT framework. The analysis uses cross-sectional dependence and slope-heterogeneity tests, panel unit-root and cointegration procedures, fixed-effects models, heterogeneous long-run estimators, quantile regression, and robustness checks. The results show that food production, agricultural value added, carbon intensity, and economic development are positively associated with ecological footprint in the benchmark models, while population is negatively associated with it. Crop yield and rule of law do not show stable significant associations in the main specifications. In the long-run estimators, carbon intensity remains the most consistent positive correlate of ecological pressure, while government effectiveness shows a negative association in the AMG model. Overall, ecological pressure in South Asia is most consistently associated with carbon-intensive development, whereas agricultural and institutional effects are more sensitive to specification.