Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Many articles have been published on tunneling through the EKC (Culas, 2012; Miah et
al., 2011; Munasinghe, 1995, 1999; Rudel et al., 2005). For instance, D. Miah et al. (2011) stud-
ied creating a tunnel in the EKC to lower the turning point for the case of waste emission
and suspended particulates for Bangladesh in 2011, taking special policy via government.
As another example, similar work has been conducted for tunneling through the EKC for
deforestation of China (Culas, 2012) employing speciic policy. For both cases, choosing
particular policies are the key point for tunneling of the EKC. However, in general, the fol-
lowing routes can be taken for the leapfrogging or tunneling of the EKC:
1. Adopting particular policy via government (Culas, 2012)
2. Adopting emerging and advanced technologies (www.wikipedia.org/leapfrogging)
As mentioned before, the tunneling can also occur through the transition of pollution-
generating technologies from a more developed country to a less developed one. In that
case, the pollution will decline in the originating country; however, the pollution increment
will transfer to the recipient. Thus, the problem is not solved and has just been transferred.
18.3.2 Policy Role
Grossman and Krueger (1995) in their article stated that “the strongest link between income
and pollution in fact is via an induced policy response.” Actually, these policies are, in turn,
induced by societal demand. Some economists suggest that these are very important omitted
variables in the EKC evaluation, and that what cleaned up the environment was not any income
increment, but rather political institutions responding to public demand (Harvard Institute of
Politics). In fact, there is a political mechanism underlying the EKC relationship and includes
political variables in addition to income in the EKC. Political institutions have a signiicant
effect on environmental quality for a great deal of water pollutants (Lin and Liscow, 2013). As
another example, Hwang (2007) worked on the effect of regime change from communism to
democracy on the environmental quality by considering water pollutants indicators such as
BOD (biological oxygen demand), nitrate, and phosphorus. He studied seven European coun-
tries that moved from communism to democracy in eastern Europe. Through a more open
political atmosphere and an economic growth rate increment attributed to the regime change,
a better water quality was achieved (Hwang, 2007).
Culas (2012) studied adopting special policies for tunneling through the EKC for forest
transition. He stated that attempts to reach an international agreement on curbing defor-
estation have achieved little success despite >30 years of United Nations negotiations.
However, new initiatives from REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest
Degradation) could provide inancial incentives to curb deforestation. The inancial incen-
tives from REDD can make the development paths toward positive forest cover changes by
shortening the forest transition periods in the countries. In summary, tunneling through
the EKC is possible, by (Munasinghe and Swart, 2004):
• Adopting “win-win” policies that provide simultaneous economic, environmen-
tal, and social gains
• Using complementary measures to address harmful impacts and introducing
remedies that eliminate imperfections like policy distortion, and market failures
to strengthen capacity for environmental protection
• Reshaping economy-wide policies in cases where environmental and social dam-
age was serious enough
