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Introduction ‎:

The main challenge to global sustainable development is environmental degradation due to ‎increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The ecological footprint index is widely used to ‎measure environmental degradation and represents environmental sustainability. The ‎Ecological Footprint Index is an indicator of environmental sustainability and is the most ‎appropriate indicator for assessing sustainable development - in the sense of meeting ‎current needs without reducing environmental capacity - for future generations in a region. ‎Given the importance of political and economic globalization and its impact on ‎environmental quality, the purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between ‎economic and political globalization with the index of environmental degradation in Iran. ‎The innovation of this study compared to previous studies is prominent in two dimensions. ‎First, in most studies, the emission of one types of greenhouse gases, such as CO2, is ‎considered as an indicator of environmental degradation, and this shows a small part of the ‎degradation. Therefore, the use of ecological footprint as a measure of environmental ‎degradation is the present study innovation‏.‏

Methodology ‎:

KOF is a comprehensive index of globalization that includes three very important ‎economic, social and political aspects. The economic aspect of globalization index includes ‎trade, foreign direct investment (FDI) and foreign investment in stocks (FPI) - buying bonds ‎and stocks of companies in stock exchange transactions and deposit bills in foreign banks - ‎Barriers to trade, such as restrictions and tariffs, include barriers to covert imports, tariffs, ‎international trade taxes, and capital controls on real flows. Therefore, this index, by ‎increasing the volume and variety of exchanges of goods, services and capital flows, etc., ‎has a high power in explaining and reflecting the growth of economic interdependence of ‎countries. Political globalization includes the diversification of embassies in the country, ‎membership in international organizations, ratification of international treaties, as well as ‎participation in UN Security Council missions. Social globalization includes variables that ‎affect personal audiences such as telephone traffic and international tourism, information ‎streams such as the Internet, newspapers, etc.. Importantly, in addition to economic ‎globalization, the index also includes social and political globalization. Therefore, this ‎index is more comprehensive than other indicators used in previous studies. To calculate the ‎KOF index, each of the variables - the variables of economic, social and political ‎globalization - is converted to a number in the range of 1 to 100. The number 100 indicates ‎the highest value and the number 1 indicates the lowest value. The data is converted to ‎percentages of the original distribution, then weights are selected for each subgroup. These ‎weights are calculated for all countries and all years using principal component analysis. ‎Finally, the general index, which is a composite index, is obtained from the weighted sum ‎of these sub-indices. In order to investigate the asymmetric effects of economic ‎globalization on the ecological footprint, the non-linear extended nonlinear regression ‎‎(NARDL) approach was used. The extended NARDL is the extended-interrupt self-‎regression (ARDL) method, with the advantage that the asymmetric effects of the ‎independent variables, that is, the effect of positive and negative changes of the explanatory ‎variables in the short and long run, can not be examined separately. In this regard, ‎ecological footprint, GDP per capita at constant price in year 2010, foreign direct ‎investment, fossil fuel consumption, the effect of economic globalization and the political ‎globalization are considered as explanatory variables. In order to examine the effect of ‎economic globalization and the effect of political globalization, these variables include ‎positive and negative effects. In this study, the data are time series (1995-219) and these ‎data are from three sources: Global Footprint Network to extract ecological footprint data, ‎http://globalization.kof.ethz to extract KOF data and other required data were collected ‎from the World Bank.‎

Conclusion ‎:

In this study, the asymmetric effects of economic and political globalization on the ‎ecological footprint for Iran were investigated in long-run and short-run. The results showed ‎that the negative relationship between ecological footprint and political globalization ‎confirms the hypothesis of global environmental management and shows that political ‎globalization reduces human environmental demand. Based on the results of the research, ‎suggestions are presented as follows.‎Given the direct relationship between ecological footprint and energy consumption, through ‎policies including increased investment in energy saving, energy efficiency projects and ‎investments in Increasing the role of renewable and clean energy sources can reduce energy ‎consumption and consequently the ecological footprint. Therefore, reducing energy ‎subsidies and imposing environmental taxes on illicit uses can be an effective step towards ‎reducing the ecological footprint and increasing the ecological capacity to protect the ‎interests of the future. Given the focus of the ecological footprint on how much people ‎should reduce consumption, increase technology, and improve their behavior to achieve ‎sustainability, adopting environmental protection policies to control and reduce the ‎ecological footprint is essential. In this regard, awareness is needed to reduce the extreme ‎use of ecosystems and the use of efficient technology and control of industrial pollution.‎The results of the long-run relationship showed that the negative shocks of economic ‎globalization in the long run increase the ecological footprint, so it is suggested that the ‎increase in trade liberalization to emphasize the management of its negative effects on the ‎country's environmental capacity as a principle. Therefore, it is necessary for the ‎government to develop business measures and strategies in order to increase environmental ‎protection. The development of trade with a focus on environmental protection can be a ‎useful step in improving the ecological orientation of the country. Therefore, it is ‎recommended that goods that produce more pollutants domestically be imported from ‎abroad. In this case, economic globalization can be a useful step in improving the ‎technology of production and improving the quality of the environment.‎On the other hand, the negative effect of political globalization on the ecological footprint ‎index confirms the hypothesis of global management of environment and shows that ‎political globalization reduces the demand for environment. Therefore, reducing political ‎instability and conflicts in the region is essential to reduce environmental degradation. ‎Political instability and conflict not only weaken economic performance, but also shorten ‎the horizons of economic policymakers, thereby weakening macroeconomic performance ‎and environmental regulation.‎

Environmental degradation such as greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions in the atmosphere, deforestation and collapsing fisheries indicate that human demand is exceeding the capacity of the biosphere. Therefore, in the most environmental studies, the greenhouse gases emission used an indicator of environmental impacts. But, a major weakness of these studies is that greenhouse gases emission such as carbon dioxide (CO2) is used as the index of environmental damage. In contrast, the ecological footprint represents a comprehensive indicator of anthropogenic pressure on the environment. Ecological Footprint (EF) measures the ecological assets that a population requires to produce the natural resources it consumes and to absorb its waste, especially carbon emissions. Ecological footprint is expressed in mutually exclusive units of area necessary to annually provide ecosystem services. Recent studies showed that the natural ecosystem of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, including land, air and water, has been seriously affected by the various variables. Therefore, in this study a robust set of control variables is identified for ecological footprint as a comprehensive index of environmental degradation.

To achieve this goal the Extreme Bounds Analysis (EBA) method was used for identifying a robust set of control variables. The EBA is a statistical tool, to test whether the variables suggested in previous studies are indeed robustly related to ecological footprint, independent of other explanatory variables included in the regression. Also, the KOF used as the index of Globalization. In addition, specific type of KOF include political, social and overall globalization used in the empirical analysis. The analysis covers 11 countries of MENA region from 1995 to 2014.

The results of Sala-i-Martin EBA showed that energy consumption, GDP per capita, urban population and economic, social and political globalization are robust. Also, the GDP per capita, energy consumption, urban population, have a positive effect on ecological footprint. The average effect of energy consumption on ecological footprint is 0.001 and statistically significant. Therefore, an increase of energy consumption by 10 unit relates to rising ecological pressures by almost 0.01 unit. Also, an increase in the urban population increases the ecological footprint per capita consistently and is statistically significant at 1 percent level. A 0.2 global hectare increase in the ecological footprint is driven by an increase in the urban population by 10 unit. The results showed that, a 10 percent increase in economic and social globalization will enhance ecological footprint by 0.29 and 0.49 unit, respectively. According to the EBA results, a 10 unit increase in political globalization will reduce ecological footprint by 0.16 unit. The findings show that globalization may have different effects on ecological footprint.

The findings suggest that economic and social globalization correlates positively with the ecological footprint. In contrast, political globalization have a negative relationship with ecological footprint. According to the empirical results, the negative correlation between political globalization and ecological footprint support the “global environmental governance” hypothesis. On the other hand, the positive relationship between social globalization and ecological footprint did not support the ‘global environmental awareness’ hypothesis in MENA region.

The purpose of this study was to estimate the recreational value of Valiasr Gardens in the district of Shiraz using the Subject well-being (SWB) or life satisfaction (LSA) method. Required information, including socioeconomic characteristics of the household, was obtained through interviewing garden visitors and completing 180 questionnaires in 1396. The results show that individuals' mental well-being improves with increasing income, education, and occupation, and under constant conditions, one percent increase in income, education, and occupation improves Subject well-being by 1%, 0.23, and 0.06 respectively. Park space satisfaction is directly related to subjective well-being, with 38% of visitors being satisfied with the park and practically not satisfied with the status of the park. This can indicate a lack of satisfactory space in the park. Also, the average willingness to pay users to maintain the park was estimated at 35,000 tomans, which is roughly equivalent to the willingness to receive them if such a place was not available, indicating that the amusement value of the park was very low for everyone, in other words. Gardens do not have a tangible difference for the welfare of local people.