Poverty reduction and environmental sustainability are the two significant challenges the world needs to cope with in the twenty-first century worldwide. Environmental impact is a constraint in the path of poverty alleviation and sustainable development, as well. Considering ecological footprint as a measure of environmental sustainability and accomplishing sustainable development with time-series data spanning 2010-2016, this study explores the relationship between poverty and ecological footprint. The Driscoll-Kray regression estimator is employed as it is flexible for dependencies across countries, heteroscedasticity, and autocorrelation. Findings from the studies infer that a rise in poverty reduces the ecological footprint that affects environmental sustainability. An increase in ecological footprint reduces poverty as well. The study found there is a trade-off between poverty and ecological footprint. Ambient in environmental degradation contributes significantly to reduce poverty.
Keywords: DK regression estimators; Developing Asian countries; Ecological footprint; Poverty.