Agricultural Growth and Environmental Sustainability in Morocco: An ARDL Analysis of the Dynamic Interactions Between Agricultural Value Added and CO₂ Emissions

This study examines the interactions between agricultural development, environmental sustainability, and energy transition in Morocco, where agriculture is a key driver of economic growth, employment, and food security but is increasingly constrained by environmental pressures and rising CO2 emissions. It aims to assess the compatibility between agricultural performance and ecological sustainability in the context of energy transition and trade liberalization. The analysis uses annual data from 1990 to 2021, including agricultural GDP, CO2 emissions, agricultural employment, renewable energy consumption, and trade openness. An Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model is employed to investigate both short- and long-run relationships. Stationarity is tested using ADF and PP tests, while the F-Bounds test confirms the presence of long-run cointegration among the variables. The findings indicate that CO2 emissions negatively affect agricultural growth in the long run, whereas trade openness has a positive effect, and renewable energy consumption exerts a significant negative impact. In the short run, CO2 emissions and renewable energy consumption positively influence agricultural GDP, while trade openness has a negative effect. Granger causality tests reveal unidirectional relationships, and diagnostic checks confirm model robustness.