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E3 Journal of Environmental Research and Management

E3 Journal of Environmental Research and Management Vol. 3 (6) pp. 108-0113, July 2012; © E3 Journals; ISSN 2141-7466


Validity of environmental kuznets curve: Some review findings

T. Subba Lakshmi1 , Naresh Chandra Sahu1 *
1 School of Humanities , Social Sciences and Management (HSSM) Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar, SamantaPuri, Bhubaneswar-751013, Odisha.
*Corresponding Author E-mail: ncs7676@gmail.com
Accepted 4 July 2012

Abstract

Over the years environmental issues have been playing a remarkable role in the global debate. Recently, the question of the relationship between the global climate change and the level of economic activity becomes the major issue and comes to the focal point of research. The validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) has become standard fare in technical conversation about environmental policy due to its eventually promising implications for making economic growth sustainable in the future. In this connection, an attempt has been made in this paper to critically review the validity of EKC. It is found that the inverted ‘U’ relationship exists only for some pollutants. The EKC does not exist for the natural resources extraction problems like deforestation and biodiversity loss, etc. The expected shape of the EKC might not be same for every country and the predicted turning point in income is also not same for every country. Since countries show significant differences in political, social, economic and biophysical factors, one should expect that different countries exhibit different patterns for their relationships between environment (or the level of different pollutants) and income. Almost all the studies seem to agree that policy plays a more important role than income in the environmental transition observed in many countries. The main conclusion that should be drawn from this paper is that EKC hypothesis should not be taken for granted and further investigation needs to be done in this regard.

Keywords: Environment, Income, Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC).

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