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Governments internationally strive to balance environmental health and economic development. Modern economies, specifically emerging ones, emphasize the importance of eco-friendly progress, where the pace of economic growth limits the ecological footprint. The ecological footprint denotes both the trajectory of natural resource extraction in the economic process and how quickly these resources can be replenished, as well as the capacity of the ecological sector to absorb waste from this process. This study examines 38 countries from 1994 to 2020 to investigate the drivers of the ecological footprint and found that environmentally related technologies harmfully influence ecological deprivation but are positively affected by gross domestic product growth. Renewable energy diminishes pollution levels, while urbanization has an insignificant effect. Imports were only found to be significant with one econometric technique, and their impact on the ecological footprint was positive. Income level affects the influence of gross domestic product on the ecological footprint. Lower-income quantiles have a more significant impact than higher quantiles. The Granger causality test shows bidirectional causality between the ecological footprint and exogenous factors: eco-technologies, gross domestic product/capita, renewable energy, urbanization, and imports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]