Sustainable development goals aim to go beyond economic growth and achieve improvements in quality of life within ecological limits. In this context, the development of social welfare is considered a complementary indicator of natural resources and environmental sustainability, and today it is among the priority research areas in both academic literature and policy-making processes.  As in many studies in this context, this study uses the Human Development Index (HDI) published by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as an indicator of social welfare and improvements in living standards, and the Ecological Footprint (EF) as an indicator of the pressure of human activities on the environment. This study examines the relationship between the ecological footprint and the human development index for the sample of Turkey for the period 1990-2023. The results of the ARDL test show that there is an inverse U-shaped relationship between the ecological footprint and the human development index.