Introduction: The ecological footprint is a composite indicator that measures the balance between environmental supply and demand, representing the area of globally average productive land required to support human activities. This index plays a significant role in managerial decision-making and sustainability planning. This study investigates the impact of uncertainties in key socioeconomic factors on the ecological footprint of BRICS countries from 1992 to 2022. The research analyzes how human activities exert pressure on natural resources and offers managerial strategies to mitigate this pressure.
Material and methods: To analyze the data and evaluate the influence of five key variables on the ecological footprint (ECFP), we employed a fuzzy regression model with symmetric coefficients. These variables are urbanization (URB), hydropower energy consumption (HPW), globalization index (GLIN), trade (TRD), and per capita income (GDP). The use of fuzzy regression enhances the accuracy of our analysis, particularly for the nonlinear relationships between these variables. We used MATLAB software for the computational estimation of the model. This approach helps to precisely identify the degree of influence of each variable on the ecological footprint, providing a solid foundation for environmental management and decision-making.
Results and discussion: The results indicate that urbanization has varying impacts on the ecological footprint across the countries studied. Brazil showed the highest impact with a value of 4.865, while China recorded the lowest impact at 0.180. Regarding hydropower energy consumption, South Africa had the highest impact at 3.969, while Iran showed the lowest impact at 6.389×10−16. The findings for the globalization index show that Iran had the highest impact with a value of 4.991, while South Africa had the lowest at 1.172×10−14. In terms of trade, Egypt had the highest impact at 0.563, and Iran had the lowest at 6.170×10−16. Finally, results concerning per capita income indicate that China had the highest impact at 2.104, while Brazil had the lowest at 8.1975×10−14. These values highlight significant differences among the countries, accurately reflecting the unique status of each nation regarding each index. The data demonstrates the diverse performance of countries across various economic and environmental domains and can be used as a tool for targeted planning and decision-making. These differences also show that each country faces unique challenges and requires specific solutions for improvement. A detailed analysis of the data reveals that various factors uniquely affect each country, with lifestyle, industrialization levels, and natural resource management policies playing important roles in shaping these outcomes. Therefore, further investigation into the specifics of each variable can lead to a deeper understanding of the complex interactions between human activity and the environment.
Conclusion: The analysis demonstrates that factors such as urbanization, hydropower energy, globalization, trade, and per capita income have a differential impact on the ecological footprint of BRICS member countries. Urbanization significantly affects Egypt and South Africa but shows varied effects in Iran due to high uncertainty. Hydropower energy consumption is less important in most countries except China. Globalization and trade have weak impacts, while per capita income is significant in China and Russia but has decreased in Iran due to sanctions.

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