Environment During growth: Accounting for governance and vulnerability

The conventional environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) model holds that pollution inevitably increases until societies reach middle-income status, because poor countries do not have the institutional capacity or political will to regulate polluters. Some policy makers and researchers have cited the EKC...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:World development 2006-09, Vol.34 (9), p.1597-1611
Main Authors: Dasgupta, Susmita, Hamilton, Kirk, Pandey, Kiran D., Wheeler, David
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accountability
Developing countries
Development
Economic development
Economic growth
Economic models
Environment
Environmental degradation
Environmental quality
Governance
Kuznet's hypothesis
Kuznets
LDCs
Pollution
Pollution control
Studies
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The conventional environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) model holds that pollution inevitably increases until societies reach middle-income status, because poor countries do not have the institutional capacity or political will to regulate polluters. Some policy makers and researchers have cited the EKC model when arguing that developing countries should “grow first and clean up later.” However, new evidence suggests that this argument is incorrect because it mistakenly assumes that strong environmental governance is not possible for poor countries. This paper extends the EKC model to include a new measure of environmental governance, as well as a detailed accounting of geographic vulnerability (climate and terrain factors). We find that these two factors can account for much of the observed variation in developing-country air pollution levels.
ISSN:0305-750X
1873-5991
DOI:10.1016/j.worlddev.2005.12.008