Despite a surge in research on mitigating environmental degradation and creating environmental awareness in recent past, researcher and other policmakers are still of the view that environmental destruction is on the rise, thereby calling into question the viability of these works to address the problem. This study, therefore, seeks to conduct a trend analysis to examine the knowledge gaps in studies related to understanding the determining factors of environmental degradation using a bibliometric analysis. For this purpose, the study reviewed existing papers using keyword search engines in the Dimensions database to retrieve published scientific works from 2000 to 2023. The study revealed that the main focus of environmental degradation has evolved over time, shifting from the sole focus of ecological footprint in between 2000 and 2005 to more such as carbon footprint, greenhouse gases, carbon sequestration, renewable energy, and input–output analysis 2013 to 2023. Also, the last decade has seen a drastic rise in scholarly works on environmental degradation. The result also revealed that the emerging theme in relation to environmental degradation is associated with indoor air pollution. It is therefore imperative for researchers to shift their focus to indoor air pollution as this may have a more direct and devastating impact on not only the environment but also human health.