Determinants of Environmental Degradation and Empirical Investigation of Kuznets Curve: A Comparative Study of India and Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper investigates the factors responsible for Environmental degradation in terms of higher Carbon dioxide and Nitrous oxide emission over the period 1981 – 2011 for Bangladesh and India from data of World development indicator. Industrialization and greenhouse gas are major contributing factors identified for deteriorating the air quality in Bangladesh and India respectively. Concentration of population in urban areas increases carbon emission and economic globalization reduces Nitrous oxide emission in both economies. Estimation results of reduced from equation for CO2 emission provides support in favour of inverted U and N shaped Kuznets curve for India which is robust to using dynamic specification. For Bangladesh the shape is Inverted U but this is not robust to using dynamic model. In quadratic approach to Kuznets curve energy consumption does play an important role for increased carbon emission in India but not in Bangladesh.

Environmental sustainability risk, institutional effectiveness and urbanization

“…These observed outcomes conform to the suggestion by Dragulanescu and Dragulanescu 27 that sustained increment in urbanization, population, production and consumption result in further exploitation and usage of natural resources, a condition that could degrade the environment in the form of emission of CO 2 . This conclusion is also consistent with the results of empirical works such as Hussain, 39 Shahbaz et al, 44 Azam and Khan 43 for Sri Lanka and Iheonu et al 46 for the sub-region of SSA, but contradicts the conclusion by Adebayo et al 42 for Thailand and Azam and Khan 43 for Bangladesh and India. Institutional quality index on the other hand is found to exert significant negative influence on CO 2 emissions per the results presented in the table.…”

“…In a study that focused on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries from 1980 to 2017, Zmami and Ben-Salha 38 also identified per capita GDP, energy consumption, urbanization, international trade and foreign direct investment as key factors influencing CO 2 emissions. Husain 39 also identified industrialization and greenhouse gas as the major factors that deteriorate air quality in Bangladesh and India respectively. Ganda 40 focused on verifying the determinants of environmental pollution in SSA from 1990 to 2014.…”

“…Further review of the literature highlights empirical works that have also focused on demographic and institutional factors in the determinants of environmental degradation debate. For instance, in a study based on data from Bangladesh and India, Hussain 39 concluded that concentration of population in urban areas lead to increment in carbon emissions. Wong and Wan 41 also approached the subject matter by conducting two surveys in 2000 and 2008 in examining the development of environment concerns in Hong Kong.…”

Understanding the Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis: Empirical Evidence from Bangladesh

“…Bangladesh's form is an inverted U; however, this isn't strong enough to be used in a dynamic model. Energy consumption has a significant impact in growing carbon emissions in India, but not in Bangladesh, according to a quadratic approach to the Kuznets curve [7].…”