Economic growth and atmospheric pollution in Spain: discussing the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis

Abstract

The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis posits an inverted U relationship between environmental pressure and per capita income. Recent research has examined this hypothesis for different pollutants in different countries. Despite certain empirical evidence shows that some environmental pressures have diminished in developed countries, the hypothesis could not be generalized to the global relationship between economy and environment at all. In this article we contribute to this debate analyzing the trends of annual emission flux of six atmospheric pollutants in Spain. The study presents evidence that there is not any correlation between higher income level and smaller emissions, except for SO 2 whose evolution might be compatible with the EKC hypothesis. The authors argue that the relationship between income level and diverse types of emissions depends on many factors. Thus it cannot be thought that economic growth, by itself, will solve environmental problems.

Inequality in CO2 emissions across countries and its relationship with income inequality: A distributive approach

“…It is too restrictive to assume that countries with very different economic, geographic, and cultural structures would follow the same behavioural pattern. Therefore, the countries could not be assumed to behave over time following the relationship estimated for the panel of countries, and it would be necessary to undertake an analysis for individual countries and groups of countries (Roca et al 2001). Furthermore, it is possible that some rich countries would have achieved some reduction in their emissions -or limited their growth-at the expense of externalising environmental costs by moving the polluting industries and the extraction of resources and energy to poorer countries (Arrow et al, 1995 andStern et al, 1996).…”

“…Several studies have contrasted this hypothesis on different pollutants with different results (revisions in Ekins, 1997;Stern, 1998;or Stern et al, 1996), the evidence generally being to the contrary for the case of CO 2 emissions (see e.g. Roca et al, 2001). Figure 1 shows the non-parametric estimation of the relationship between per capita CO 2 emissions and per capita GDP, taking all the observations of the panel of countries for the considered years.…”

CO2 emissions and economic activity: Heterogeneity across countries and non-stationary series

“…The analysis of the series stationarity and cointegration when these are non stationary have been developed by various authors in the last decade, both for panel data and for individual countries studies (Perman andStern, 1999 and2003;Lekakis, 2000;Roca et al, 2001;Friedl and Getzner, 2003;Egli, 2004;Dinda and Coondoo, 2006;Wagner, 2008;Halicioglu, 2008;Piaggio, 2008;Song et al, 2008;Lee andLee, 2009 andWang, 2009). …”

The Effect of Organic Farms on Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions

“…On a per capita basis, both GHG emissions declined at about the same rate after 1995 even though non-Annex I countries are not subject to target reductions. Roca et al (2001) argue that the environmental pressure to assimilate is an important consideration for countries.…”

“…Past empirical research that uses the EKC model analyzes the impact of carbon dioxide (Shafik, 1994;Schmalensee et al, 1998;Dijkgraaf & Vollebergh, 2005;Aldy, 2007;Grunewald & Martinez-Zarzoso, 2009;Kumazawa & Callaghan, 2010) and common air pollutants including sulfur dioxide (Grossman & Krueger, 1995;Roca et al, 2001;Harbaugh et al, 2002). One of the few studies which investigated the EKC model for nitrous oxide and methane is the research by Roca et al (2001).…”