Investigating the Convergence of Built-up Land Footprint in the Top Ten Most Populous Countries: Evidence from the Second-Generation Panel Methods

The world has encountered varied forms of environmental degradation that threaten human beings and all ecosystems. Industrialisation, embedded nonrenewable energy resources, the dominant role of energy inefficiency, and the use of non-green technologies in production, deforestation, and the overexploitation of natural resources are among the essential factors driving global warming, climate change, and other forms of environmental degradation. Over the past six decades, the policy actions required to mitigate environmental degradation and ensure the sustainable generation of natural resources have increasingly become an essential agenda for governments and international organisations. Each leap forward in human history leads to bigger, more complex, and megacities. With advances in industrialization, transportation, technology, and infrastructure, urbanization has become more visible, and a large number of people now live in cities. The pressure of modernization and development has had a significant impact on all segments of the planet, and the land is among the most affected areas. The built-up land footprint is a pivotal indicator of the area of land covered by human infrastructure, such as transportation, housing, and industrial structures. Within this context, the study investigates the stochastic properties of the built-up land footprint using data from 1971-2024 for the top 10 most populous countries. Convergence hypothesis and the persistence of the built-up land footprint are tested using second-generation panel methods. As a result of the examination, convergence hypothesis is verified in the considered countries, while the univariate results on the persistence of the built-up land footprint vary across countries. Hence, joint actions aimed at mitigating the built-up land are provided for the considered countries, and locally based policies are also disclosed for countries whose series do not exhibit a mean-reverting pattern. The study discloses knowledge for sustainable urbanization and supports global efforts to mitigate the adverse effects of anthropogenic activities on land.