scholarly journals Revising the Environmental Kuznets Curve for Deforestation: An Empirical Study for Bulgaria

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (16) ◽  
pp. 4364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tsiantikoudis ◽  
Zafeiriou ◽  
Kyriakopoulos ◽  
Arabatzis

The evolution of human societies along with efforts to enhance economic welfare may well lead to the deterioration of the environment. Deforestation is a usual process throughout evolution that poses pressing and potentially irreversible environmental risks, despite the ecological and modernization processes that aim to limit those risks. The economic growth–environmental degradation relationship—namely, the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis—is studied in alignment with the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. The novelty of the study is attributed to the use of the carbon emissions equivalent derived by deforestation as an index for environmental degradation in Bulgaria as a new entrant into the European Union (EU). In addition, we use the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita as a proxy for income, being determined as an independent variable. Research findings cannot validate the inverted U-shape of the EKC hypothesis; instead, an inverted N pattern is confirmed. The implementation of appropriate policies aiming at the protection of the environment through the diversification of economic activities is related to the use of forest land and other resources, or related sectors (agroforestry, ecotourism activities, and scientific research), rather than only the direct utilization of forested areas; the limitation of afforestation processes and their negative impacts on citizens’ welfare are also addressed.

2020 ◽  
Vol 202 ◽  
pp. 03023
Author(s):  
Andryan Setyadharma ◽  
Shanty Oktavilia ◽  
Yayu Tika Atmadani ◽  
Indah Fajarini Sri Wahyuningrum

Natural resources play as vital inputs for economic activities, mainly in developing countries. However, massive use of natural resources puts more pressure on the environment and as the result, the quality of environment is deteriorating. The body of economic literature have shown that income is associated with harm to the natural environment. The relationship between income and degradation of the environment is known as the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. Previous studies of EKC hypothesis in Indonesia are still limited and the results are inconclusive due to different results. Therefore, the aim of this study is to present a new insight of the existence of EKC in Indonesia using different method. Most of previous studies of EKC in Indonesia employ Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method, while this study uses data panel regression method from 33 provinces in Indonesia during 2012 to 2018. The result confirms the existence of EKC hypothesis in Indonesia. This study also estimates the turning point, a level of income that starts give positive impact on the environment. This result gives new insight to the existing literature. The policy implication for policymakers are straightforward, i.e. improve wealth of the society through higher income for the protection of the environment.


Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 3415
Author(s):  
Bartosz Jóźwik ◽  
Antonina-Victoria Gavryshkiv ◽  
Phouphet Kyophilavong ◽  
Lech Euzebiusz Gruszecki

The rapid economic growth observed in Central European countries in the last thirty years has been the result of profound political changes and economic liberalization. This growth is partly connected with reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. However, the problem of CO2 emissions seems to remain unresolved. The aim of this paper is to test whether the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis holds true for Central European countries in an annual sample data that covers 1995–2016 in most countries. We examine cointegration by applying the Autoregressive Distributed Lag bound testing. This is the first study examining the relationship between CO2 emissions and economic growth in individual Central European countries from a long-run perspective, which allows the results to be compared. We confirmed the cointegration, but our estimates confirmed the EKC hypothesis only in Poland. It should also be noted that in all nine countries, energy consumption leads to increased CO2 emissions. The long-run elasticity ranges between 1.5 in Bulgaria and 2.0 in Croatia. We observed exceptionally low long-run elasticity in Estonia (0.49). Our findings suggest that to solve the environmental degradation problem in Central Europe, it is necessary to individualize the policies implemented in the European Union.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 12507
Author(s):  
Farrah Dina Abd Razak ◽  
Norlin Khalid ◽  
Mohd Helmi Ali

This paper aims to discover the asymmetry impacts and co-integration between gross domestic product, financial development, energy use and environmental degradation by featuring institutional quality covering the Malaysia economy during the period from 1984 until 2017 using a nonlinear auto-regressive distributed lag model. The results confirm the existence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis for both linear and nonlinear analyses, thus verifying the relevance of symmetric and asymmetric EKC hypotheses for Malaysia. Further, this study verifies the attributes of financial development and institutional quality that mitigates the concern on CO2 emissions, but contradicting results were produced on energy use. The implication of this finding provides new guidelines for Malaysia authorities to consider the asymmetries in formulating environment-related policies to maintain environmental quality and achieve their sustainable development goals.


2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 444-461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caner Demir ◽  
Raif Cergibozan ◽  
Adem Gök

The aim of the study is to investigate the impact of income inequality on environmental quality in Turkey within the Environmental Kuznets Curve framework. In order to observe the short-run and long-run effects of income inequality on environmental quality, an autoregressive distributed lag bounds test on CO2 emission has been employed for the period 1963–2011 of Turkey. The results of the analysis reveal that there is a negative association between CO2 emission level and income inequality, which implies that increasing income inequality reduces environmental degradation in Turkey. Hence, a greater inequality in the society leads to less aggregate consumption in the economy due to lower propensity to emit in the richer households resulting in better environmental quality. The findings confirm an argument in the existing literature, which suggests that for developing countries, until a certain level of development, environmental degradation increases as income inequality in the society decreases. The results also confirm the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
gildas dohba dinga ◽  
DOBDINGA CLETUS FONCHAMNYO ◽  
ELVIS DZE ACHUO

Abstract Global warming and its unavoidable negatives effects on man and the environment have been a key if not the most important issue occupying policy makers in the world at large today. The much talked about green economy nowadays seeks to achieve sustainable economic growth and development without compromising environmental quality. The relationship between environmental degradation and economic growth is largely explained by the environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. By employing the basic postulation of the baseline EKC framework, this study proposes and tests the existence of a dualistic approach of the EKC hypothesis. Geometry is used to illustrate the proposed dualistic model. Meanwhile, the novel dynamic common correlation effect econometric technique is employed to test the existence of the dualistic EKC within a panel of 109 countries from 1995 to 2016. The outcome from the estimated models shows that, in the global sample, the existence of the dualistic U-shape and N-shape EKC hypothesis is validated. When the sample is split into sub samples based on income levels, the U-shape EKC hypothesis is validated for lower income and high income economies meanwhile, the N-shape dualistic EKC is mostly associated with high income economies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 09021
Author(s):  
Citrasmara Galuh Nuansa ◽  
Wahyu Widodo

Sustainable development with three main pillars, namely environmental, economic, and social, is the concept of country’s development to achieve inclusive economic growth, good environmental quality, and improvement of people's welfare. However, the dominance of economic factors cause various environmental problem. This phenomenon occurs in most of developing countries, including in Indonesia. The relationship between economic activity and environmental quality has been widely discussed and empirically tested by scholars. This descriptive research analysed the hypothesis called Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) from a perspective of sustainable development in Indonesia. EKC hypothesis illustrates the relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation forming an inverted U-curve, indicating that at the beginning of development, environmental quality will decrease along with increasing economic growth, and then reached a certain point the environmental quality will gradually improve. In this paper will be discussed how the relationship between environmental quality and economic growth in Indonesia was investigated. The preliminary results show that most of the empirical studies use the conventional approach, in which the CO2 emission used as the proxy of environmental degradation. The existence of inverted U-curve is also inconclusive. Therefore, the extension research on the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality in Indonesia using the EKC hypothesis is required.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 93
Author(s):  
Jihuan Zhang

China is the largest CO2 emitter in the world, and it shared 28% of the global CO2 emissions in 2017. According to the Paris Agreement, it is estimated that China’s CO2 emissions will reach its peak by 2030. However, whether or not the CO2 emissions in China will rise again from its peak is still unknown. If the emission level continues to increase, the Chinese policymakers might have to introduce a severe CO2 reduction policy. The aim of this paper is to conduct an empirical analysis on the long-standing relationship between CO2 emissions and income while controlling energy consumption, trade openness, and urbanization. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model and the bounds test were adopted in evaluating the validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. The quantile regression was also used as an inference approach. The study reveals two major findings: first, instead of the conventional U-shaped EKC hypothesis, there is the N-shaped relationship between CO2 emissions and real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in the long run. Second, a positive effect of energy consumption and a negative effect of urbanization on CO2 emissions, in the long run, are also estimated. Quantitatively, if energy consumption rises by 1%, then CO2 emissions will increase by 0.9% in the long run. Therefore, the findings suggest that a breakthrough, in terms of policymaking and energy innovation under China’s specific socioeconomic and political circumstances, are required for future decades.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 1076 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tijjani Adamu ◽  
Ihtisham Haq ◽  
Muhammad Shafiq

The economic size of the Indian economy and its status as one of the major global emitters of carbon emissions makes the country a good place to study the determinants of environmental degradation in India. The study aims at analyzing the impact of energy, export variety, and foreign direct investment (FDI) on environmental degradation in India in the context of environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. The long run relationship was found between variables of the study through a cointegration test, whereas long run estimates were obtained through cointegration and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS). Results of the study reveal that energy consumption, export variety, FDI, and income positively contributed to environmental degradation in India. Results also unveil that the EKC hypothesis does not exist in India. Causality analyses document unidirectional causality from income and FDI to environmental degradation, and bidirectional causality was witnessed between energy consumption and environmental degradation and between export variety and environmental degradation in the long run. The long run and the short run causality highlight that India has to forego the short run economic growth in order to improve its environmental quality and reduce global carbon emissions; however, it will not affect its long term economic development process.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Takashi Fukuda

This paper investigated Malaysia’s energy-growth nexus and environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis over the period 1971-2014 by taking the globalization variables of trade openness and foreign direct investment (FDI) and the structural break dummy of the Asian financial crisis of 1997 into estimation. To give interference, the Granger causality tests were implemented in the framework of two cointegration techniques: vector error correction model (VECM) and autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL). As per Malaysia’s energy-growth nexus, referring to different results of the two approaches, we concluded that the presence of the energy-growth nexus was statistically confirmed, but it has not been fully established yet in the country. On the other hand, both the VECM and ARDL results provided the same conclusion for Malaysia’s EKC hypothesis, that is, in the initial stage, as the higher economic growth, the less CO2 emissions, but after a threshold, the higher economic growth, the more CO2 emissions.


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