CO₂ EMISSIONS AND STATIONARITY IN PAKISTAN: A TIME-SERIES ANALYSIS OF SOCIOECONOMIC, ENERGY, ENVIRONMENTAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL INDICATORS

Abstract

Over the past 30 years, Pakistan has seen significant economic development, urbanization, energy needs, and environmental shifts. The study investigates the trends and stationarity of the carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and selected socioeconomic, energy, environmental, technological, financial, demographic, and natural-resource indicators across Pakistan over the time period 1990–2023. Secondary data was used annually from world recognized data sources such as the World Bank, International Energy Agency, Global Carbon Project, Our World in Data, International Monetary Fund, and Financial Development Database. Descriptive time-series trend analysis and Augmented Dickey–Fuller (ADF) unit-root test were performed on 13 variables. A significant long-term trend of increasing CO₂ emissions was found, with emissions around 66 Mt CO₂e in 1990, reaching 236 Mt CO₂e in 2022 and decreasing in 2023. In general, energy consumption, GDP, urbanization and technological development had positive trends while forest area had a negative one. The ADF test indicates that three of the variables, namely GDP growth, urban population and fossil-fuel energy consumption, were stationary at level while ten were non-stationary. Persistent trends were much less prominent after first-order differencing and the fluctuations around zero were more stable. The findings highlight the importance of stationarity testing and sustainable energy and technological policies for improving Pakistan’s environmental sustainability.