Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
80
70
60
50
Confirmed
Mixed
Rejected
40
30
20
10
0
FIGURE 18.6
Conirmation of the EKC hypothesis by year. (From Jordan, B.R. Workshop on Original Policy Research . Georgia
Tech. School of Public Policy, 2010.)
One possible interpretation of the EKC curve is that to reduce the environmental degrada-
tion impact, a certain level of economic development is needed. One explanation could be that
the environment is like a luxury good (Gangadharan and Valenzuela, 2001), which at early
stages of development the society and government do not care about that, but when the income
reaches a certain level the society wants to pay for it. Having greater prosperity, the people
demand more attention be paid to their living conditions. It is also possible that the bell-shaped
curve can be caused through ceasing production of polluting products in a country and begin-
ning to import the product from other countries, i.e., low-income or developing countries, in
which they have less strict environmental regulations. In general, creating bell-shaped curves
and the existence of turning points might occur through the following channels:
1. Policy change induced by the government (Culas, 2012)
2. Society awareness of environmental hazards (Culas, 2012)
3. Technology improvement (Ruttan, 1971)
In all of the above-mentioned routes, irst, the government and society should be aware
and care about the environmental degradation; then, when income per capita crosses a
certain point, the people and government try to invest in environmental degradation
mitigation. Up to now, several studies have been conducted to ind the suficient level of
economic growth, i.e., income per capita, for each environmental parameter to reach the
turning point (Grossman and Krueger, 1995; Culas, 2012; Munasinghe and Swart, 2004).
For instance, as seen in Table 18.4, the required income per capita for a turning point for
arsenic pollution in water is estimated at $4900 (Grossman and Krueger, 1995).
While EKC is a useful framework for monitoring, comparison, and analysis of environ-
mental degradation based on income per capita, it can be misinterpreted and misused
by policy makers. A possible misunderstanding is that the environment is the inevitable
consequence of economic growth. The key question is that whether we need to wait for
the certain economic growth to stop a speciic environmental degradation? Or what if, for
example, a developing low-income country does not reach the needed threshold level, and
what if it reaches the threshold when it is too late for compensating the environmental
damages like what is happening in deforestation?
 
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