the environmental kuznets curve environmental protection policy and income distribution abstract the effect of economic growth on pollution emissions differs substantially among high income countries i address this issue by analyzing public environmental policy decisions individual heterogeneity relative income effect and the political framework in which policy decisions are taken determine the emergence of the downward sloping segment of the environmental kuznets curve ekc income inequality produces a gap between the country s ability to pay for environmental protection and a country s willingness to pay i test this result by using oecd data on public r d expenditure for environmental protection the conclusion is that contrary to the ek hypothesis moments of the income distribution function other than the mean may be important for the emergence of a virtuous path of sustainable growth in high income countries

assessing income population and technology impacts on co2 emissions in canada where s the ekc abstract this study investigates the macroeconomic forces underlying carbon dioxide co2 emissions from fossil fuel use in canada in keeping with the relevant literature on environmental degradation three forces are expected to influence co2 emissions gross domestic product per capita gdp capita population and technological change while previous work has employed reduced form models that allow for non linear relationships between co2 and gdp capita it has been common practice to assume linear relationships between co2 and the latter two variables this study tests a more flexible model using a five region panel data set in canada over the period 1970 2000 findings indicate that gdp capita is unrelated to co2 that an inverted u shaped relationship exists with population and that a u shaped relationship exists with technology thus technological and population changes are supported over the commonly hypothesized environmental kuznets curve an inverted u shaped relationship between gdp capita and environmental degradation for affecting co2 emissions from fossil fuel use in canada

is it possible to improve environmental quality without reducing economic growth evidence from the qatar economy abstract in line with the priorities of the qatar national vision qnv 2030 and its principal pillars we examine in this paper the energy use economic growth nexus for qatar during the period 1970 2014 using recent development in both unit roots and ardl bounds testing approach with structural breaks we found strong evidence for the growth hypothesis this result indicates that the qatari policymakers should recognize that energy conservation policies will have adverse effects on economic growth and therefore alternative means must be undertaken to preserve the environment this paper presents and discusses a detailed economic energy and environmental policies that can help qatari policymakers in achieving the objective of balance between economic growth and environment quality

institutions and the environmental kuznets curve for deforestation a crosscountry analysis for latin america africa and asia abstract the relationship between deforestation and income across 66 countries of latin america africa and asia is examined institutional characteristics as well as macroeconomic policies of each country are hypothesized to impact deforestation results show strong evidence of an environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship between income and deforestation for all three continents institutional structure and macroeconomic policy significantly affect the tropical deforestation process improvements in political institutions and governance significantly reduce deforestation the factors leading to deforestation differ across regions however and there is no one size fits all global policy recommendation for restraining the tropical deforestation process

investigating environmental kuznets curve from an energy intensity perspective empirical evidence from china abstract this study pioneers investigating the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis and its possible regional differential characteristics in china based on 2003 2017 years of provincial panel data this research employs panel smooth transition auto regression pstr model to analyze the impact of income levels on environmental pollution and identify the ekc threshold of energy intensity then 30 chinese provinces were categorized by energy intensity to examine the inter provincial and interregional differences in the ekc threshold of energy intensity rather than the traditional threshold of income the results indicate that china s pollution emissions and energy intensities show a stepwise decreasing pattern from the western region to the eastern region in addition the impact of income levels on pollution emissions is non linear and the critical value of energy intensity is 0 9168 between the high and low regimes an inverted u shaped environmental kuznets curve is accepted for energy intensity with 0 7670 as its threshold value when the energy intensity is higher lower than the threshold value the income elasticity of pollution emission is positive negative the more developed provinces and municipalities mainly in the eastern region are proved to exceed the threshold than the provinces in the central and western regions within the sample period given these findings this study further divides china s provinces into eco friendly low pollution and high pollution provinces and accordingly the most important policy recommendations were discussed for policy makers and researchers this research can provide a new insight to investigate countries with unbalanced development levels within and a reference for environmental governance policies in sub regions

taking account of governance implications for land use dynamics food prices and trade patterns deforestation mainly caused by unsustainable agricultural expansion results in a loss of biodiversity and an increase in greenhouse gas emissions as well as impinges on local livelihoods countries governance performance particularly with respect to property rights security exerts significant impacts on land use patterns by affecting agricultural yield related technological investment and cropland expansion this study aims to incorporate governance factors into a recursive agro economic dynamic model to simulate governance impacts on land use patterns at the global scale due to the difficulties of including governance indicators directly into numerical models we use lending interest rates as discount rates to reflect risk accounting factors associated with different governance scenarios in addition to a reference scenario three scenarios with high low and mixed divergent discount rates are formed to represent weak strong and fragmented governance we find that weak governance leads to slower yield growth increased cropland expansion and associated deforestation mainly in latin america sub saharan africa south asia and southeast asia this is associated with increasing food prices particularly in sub saharan africa and southeast asia by contrast strong governance performance provides a stable political and economic situation which may bring down deforestation rates stimulate investment in agricultural technologies and induce fairly strong decreases in food prices

does democracy lead to a better environment deforestation and the democratic transition peak the relationship between democracy and environment is subject to controversy some scientists find that democracy has a positive impact in reducing environmental disruption other scholars claim that democracy tends to accelerate environmental degradation by using deforestation rates as a proxy for environmental disruption we suggest that both sides might be right our quantitative analysis has three important outcomes first there is evidence of an inverted u shaped relationship between deforestation and democracy second countries in democratic transition experience the highest deforestation rates compared to non democracies and mature democracies third in explaining deforestation rates democracy has larger explanatory power than income this last result implies that in reducing deforestation rates the emphasis should not only be on economic development but even more on democratization

is trade good or bad for the environment sorting out the causality we seek to contribute to the debate over globalization and the environment by asking what is the effect of trade on a country s environment for a given level of gdp we take specific account of the endogeneity of trade using exogenous geographic determinants of trade as instrumental variables we find that trade tends to reduce three measures of air pollution statistical significance is high for concentrations of so2 moderate for no2 and lacking for particulate matter although results for other environmental measures are not as encouraging there is little evidence that trade has a detrimental effect on the environment

relationship between forest resources and economic growth empirical evidence from china abstract natural resources especially forests are critical to china s sustainable development in recent years effective utilization of forest resources has become a significant concern in china in this study on the basis of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis the relationship between forest resources and economic growth is examined using panel data from 30 provinces in china for the period 2002 2015 and the generalized method of moments gmm approach to control for potential endogeneity the empirical results indicate that with continuous economic growth the timber output and area of afforestation would at first increase and then decrease after reaching the corresponding turning points given the considerable regional gap in economic and social development three regions of china were investigated to perform a more in depth analysis evidence observed for the country and the three regions suggests an ekc for forest resources these findings indicate positive effects of china s pursuit of a more balanced growth path where forest resources would be less consumed and more actively protected

is economic growth for the birds the environment provides ecosystem services that support human wants economic growth is important for raising human living standards but whether economic growth benefits the environment is unclear research into this relationship has focused on a u shaped association known as the environmental kuznets curve ekc as economies grow environmental quality initially declines but ultimately recovers and improves however environmental quality has been narrowly defined in the research largely neglecting the availability and range of ecosystem services because these services derive from biodiversity we use avian biodiversity as a proxy for environmental quality our results replace the u shaped relationship with a lazy s relationship as economies grow environmental quality initially declines then improves over intermediate growth but ultimately declines at higher growth the ekc hypothesis has been used to forward economic growth as a means for improving environment quality our results call into question policies that rely solely on economic growth for reversing environmental decline

the environmental kuznets curve in the oecd 1870 2014 carbon dioxide co2 emissions play an important role in global warming consequently studying the relationship between co2 emissions and economic development is important especially when viewed from a historical perspective we test the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for a panel of 20 oecd nations dating back to the first globalization boom in the nineteenth century utilising recently developed panel data estimators that account for cross sectional dependence and parameter heterogeneity for the period 1870 to 2014 we find support for the ekc hypothesis for the panel as a whole with three of our preferred four estimators with turning points in income per capita that lie between 18 955 and 89 540 in 1990 us country specific results however only provide mixed support for the ekc hypothesis specifically we find evidence of an ekc for nine of the 20 countries with five exhibiting a traditional inverted u shaped relationship three exhibiting an n shaped relationship and one an inverted n shaped relationship

international trade and environmental quality a survey abstract international trade has been incorporating various aspects of environmental issues since 1970 the extent to which environmental problems might affect many facets of trade or vice versa has been the subject of considerable debate over these years in this article we have attempted to establish some of the links between international trade and environmental quality by performing a comprehensive literature review we discuss issues such as establishing direct and indirect effects of international trade on environmental quality effects of trade on economic development environmental quality and energy and their relation with each other and finally the role of governments and international organizations in this context studies have so far revealed some linkages between trade and environment through conventional trade theory however interactions between international trade and types of pollution their sink and assimilative capacity need to be analyzed using a general equilibrium approach currently very little knowledge and agreement on the nature of interactions between trade theories development process and environmental quality exist existing studies have shown that the structure of environmental regulations should be modified to reflect the existence of trade under imperfect competition therefore further research on the interaction between new trade theory and environmental regulation is needed also theoretical and quantitative analysis regarding the effects of environmental regulations on competitiveness and location decision is needed the intensity and type of environmental measures vary across issues and countries therefore harmonizing environmental measures creates an inefficient atmosphere and to assume that trade restrictions will either improve or reverse the environmental damages is a serious mistake given the dynamic and intricate nature of the problem trade and environment debate continues despite vast research and poses a challenge for researchers and policy makers in the foreseeable future

the theory of taxation for developing countries tax policy has far reaching implications for economic development and public administration this book which presents a modern theory of public finance brings together many of the most distinguished economists who have written on the subject they provide coherent principles for tax design and a systematic framework for the analysis of practical questions of tax reform and pricing policy in developing countries the book is especially timely as countries experience increasing shortages of government revenue and the distortions brought about by poorly designed tax systems it pays particular attention to the special problems of developing countries such as the taxation of agriculture the aim throughout is to develop techniques that can be quantitatively applied given the data available and empirical case studies illustrate the methods in action the authors analyze the links between tax theory social cost benefit analysis and the pricing of publicly supplied goods and services they also explore the empirical and econometric problems of identifying the tradeoffs between equity and efficiency other topics treated include the analysis of labor markets the taxation of foreign private investment and of fuel and the pricing of education although the models used concentrate on developing countries most of the methods and discussion apply as well to the problems of more affluent countries

on environmental kuznets curves arising from stock externalities abstract we develop a stock externality model in an optimal growth framework and examine the relationship between economic growth and the environment we find that as incomes rise over the growth path both the marginal benefits of pollution control and the marginal costs of pollution control rise if at a given income level the marginal benefits rise more than the marginal costs the emissions income relationship has a negative slope at that income level and vice versa we are thus able to generate examples of emissions income relationships of varying shapes by varying pollution specific parameters which determine marginal costs and benefits such as the convexity of the cost function the rate of decay of the stock of pollution and the share of consumption in the composite good an inverted u shape relationship an environmental kuznets curve requires only minimal assumptions a convex cost function and that environmental quality is a normal good imply an inverted u shape relationship for an open set of parameters we also examine how environment income relationship varies according to what measure is used for the environment emissions stock of pollution or emissions control

dynamite in the ekc tunnel inconsistencies in resource stock analysis under the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis recent studies incorporating consumption into the relationship between gdp and conservation increasingly reveal that economic prosperity does not lead to improvements in environmental quality even in cases where rich countries may appear to protect a greater proportion of their domestic resources this study reinforces those findings for forest and species conservation across two groups of countries additionally through explicit comparison with two previous ekc studies i enable an illustration of precisely how ekc results are affected by the incorporation of consumption and highlight persistent problems with ekc analyses despite general linear modeling results showing that wealthy countries drive deforestation in poorer countries through the import of forest resources ekc analyses can still indicate improvements in conservation for wealthier countries such contradictions suggest that recent methodological improvements to the ekc cannot guarantee the validity of evidence from ekc analyses poor quality of resource stocks data the restrictive time scales that can be examined with those data and the lack of consistent results across different groups of countries all speak to continued inadequacies of the ekc hypothesis and the need to focus on approaches that address actual behavior patterns exhibited by different income groups

a kuznets curve in environmental efficiency an application on oecd countries the role of the environment is an important issue in policy making andthe accurate assessment of the environmental conditions is vital inthis paper using nonparametric techniques an environmental efficiencyindex is developed for each of the oecd countries these indexes allowone both to do cross section comparisons on the state of each country sproduction process in its treatment of undesirable outputs and also totrace each country s modification of their production processesovertime furthermore in this study we investigate the factorsunderlying societies environmental concerns that eventually lead tochanges in the environmental efficiency the results provide furtherempirical evidence for the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis

an empirical analysis of forest transition and land use change in developing countries abstract deforestation is a major environmental issue in developing countries and agricultural land expansion is its main cause the objective of this paper is twofold 1 to identify the macroeconomic determinants of ending deforestation and 2 to explain cumulative deforestation and other land uses to do this we first study the probability of a turning point for deforestation i e the switch from decreasing to expanding forest areas based on the forest transition hypothesis second we adapt a land use model to explain the trade off between forest and agriculture during development to take the link between both phenomena into account we estimate a dynamic panel seemingly unrelated regression sur model along with a switching regression model applied to a dataset of 57 developing countries observed over four time periods the estimation results reveal that economic development and institutions play a significant role in long term deforestation our results also suggest that after the first development stage agriculture and forest are not always competing land uses these results provide new insights into public policies such as redd

a consumption based theory of the environmental kuznets curve abstract most theories about the inverted u relationship between pollution and income termed the environmental kuznets curve ekc are production side theories emphasizing pollution and abatement technologies production side theories are implicitly based on the assumption of low factor mobility and the absence of pollution as a variable in the utility function both assumptions are called into question by the empirical evidence of ekcs for i pollutants that are long lived and not easily shiftable and ii regional cross sections with free labor mobility hazardous waste sites are a prime example this paper develops a stylized model of the ekc based on perfect mobility of households and labor it represents the first attempt at developing a consumption side model of the ekc

do economic financial and institutional developments matter for environmental degradation evidence from transitional economies abstract several studies have examined the relationship between environmental degradation and economic growth however most of them did not take into account financial developments and institutional quality moreover stern stern d 2004 the rise and fall of the environmental kuznets curve world development 32 8 1419 1439 noted that there are important econometric weaknesses in the earlier studies such as endogeneity heteroscedasticity omitted variables etc the purpose of this paper is to fill this gap in the literature by investigating the linkage between not only economic development and environmental quality but also financial development and institutional quality we employ the standard reduced form modelling approach to control for country specific unobserved heterogeneity and gmm estimation to control for endogeneity our study considers 24 transition economies and panel data for 1993 2004 our results support the ekc hypothesis while confirming the importance of both institutional quality and financial development for environmental performance we also found that financial liberalization may be harmful for environmental quality if it is not accomplished in a strong institutional framework

environmental degradation in developing countries households and the reverse environmental kuznets curve abstract we propose an alternative explanation for the inverted u shape relationship between income and environmental degradation in developing countries production and consumption patterns of rural households are the main cause of environmental damage with a conventional household model we demonstrate that the so called environmental kuznets curve may arise when the restrictive assumption of a set of perfect markets for factors and commodities is relaxed depending on the criterion or indicator that is used to represent environmental pressure however we demonstrate that the reverse may also hold this finding highlights the importance of selecting the appropriate dependent variable in regression analyses

the determinants of atmospheric so2 concentrations reconsidering the environmental kuznets curve this analysis explores the effects of income and the spatial intensity of economic activity on the atmospheric concentration of sulfur dioxide the results indicate that there is a u shaped relation between income and atmospheric concentration of so2 and an inverted u shaped relation between the spatial intensity of economic activity and so2 concentrations these results suggest that the spatial intensity of economic activity rather than income provides the impetus for policies and technologies that reduce so2 emissions based on this result the atmospheric concentration of so2 in developing nations may decline faster than indicated by previous analyses the potential for this decline depends on the rate at which income grows relative to population the trade off between the effects of income gains and the spatial intensity of economic activity on the atmospheric concentration of so2 is consistent with the notion that some environmental problems can be ameliorated by slowing population growth and increasing income levels

property rights and deforestation in the brazilian amazon this paper focuses on the impact of property rights insecurity on deforestation in the brazilian legal amazon deforestation is considered as a risk management strategy property rights insecurity reduces the present value of forests and fosters forest conversion into agricultural and pasture lands moreover deforestation is the consequence of strategic interactions between landowners and squatters landowners clear the forest preventively in order to assert the productive use of land and to reduce the expropriation risk squatters invade land plots clear the forest and may afterwards gain official recognition with formal property titles a particular attention is paid to the measure of land property rights insecurity in the brazilian context it is assumed that property rights insecurity has a multidimensional character taken into account by the number of homicides related to land conflicts and expropriation procedures principal component analysis allows synthesising such information an econometric model of deforestation is estimated on a panel dataset on the 1988 2000 period and the nine states of the brazilian legal amazon the hypothesis that insecure land property rights contribute to higher rates of deforestation is not rejected when the simultaneity bias between insecure property rights and deforestation is addressed this result questions the modality of the brazilian land reform that considers forested areas as unproductive and thus open for expropriation procedures

valuing nature from environmental impacts to natural capital abstract economic valuation of natural and environmental assets is now a well established practice economic analysis provides several methods for discovering the impact on social welfare associated with changes in the ability of these assets to provide different goods and services in general terms these valuation exercises have been performed in the framework of environmental impact assessment or more generally cost benefit analysis there is however an increasing demand nowadays to go beyond this framework and to value natural capital natural resource stocks land and ecosystems as such there are two main reasons for this new demand on the one hand sustainability requires that proper account should be taken of capital depreciation and therefore there is a need to value natural capital changes this valuation process nevertheless only makes sense when some kind of substitution between natural and other forms of capital is allowed on the other hand there is also an increasing tendency to demand that the stock of natural capital present in a given territory be valued either to discover one of the main components of social wealth or to help adequately plan changes in land use yet whereas conventional valuation methods are probably adequate to fulfill the first task this is less true in the case of the second while even more difficulties arise in connection with the third one even if at first sight the process appears conceptually identical these tasks are of a different order of magnitude as the experience of both the world bank and the statistics division of the united nations in this respect clearly shows

the interaction of population growth and environmental quality an important question for policy is whether holding constant per capita income and other relevant factors population pressures have a significant effect upon environmental degradation the authors examine the effect of population pressures upon deforestation in 64 developing countries in an attempt to provide relevant empirical findings data on deforestation were drawn from the food and agriculture organizations production yearbook results suggest that a relationship exists between per capita income and deforestation and that for africa rural population density shifts the relationship upward the increase in the rate of deforestation levels off as income increases the rate of growth in per capita income also has a significant negative impact upon deforestation although the magnitude of the effect is small the authors close in stressing that reducing the rate of population growth is not necessarily the best way to reduce the rate of deforestation deforestation in developing countries is really a problem of market failure since property rights are often neither defined nor enforced there is essentially no private cost of deforestation with no long term stake in the land people have no incentive to use land efficiently this situation must be addressed in conjunction with the problems of poverty and population growth

deforestation and seigniorage in developing countries a tradeoff abstract most of countries covered by natural forests are developing countries with limited ability to levy taxes and restrained access to international credit markets consequently they are amenable to draw heavily on two sources of government financing namely seigniorage and deforestation revenues first we develop a theoretical model emphasizing a substitution effect between seigniorage and deforestation revenues second a panel data econometric analysis over the 1990 2010 period confirms our findings consequently a tighter monetary policy hastens deforestation third we extend the theoretical model and show that international transfers dedicated to forest protection can upturn the positive link between tighter monetary policies and deforestation and then discuss the relevance of this finding with respect to recent institutional arrangements

contagious development neighbor interactions in deforestation article i nfo we estimate neighbor interactions in deforestation in costa rica to address simultaneity and the presence of spatially correlated unobservables we measure for neighbors deforestation using the slopes of neighbors and neighbors neighbors parcels we find that neighboring deforestation significantly raises the probability of deforestation policies for agricultural development or forest conservation in one area will affect deforestation rates in non targeted neighboring areas correct estimation of the interaction reverses the naive estimate s prediction of multiple equilibria

decoupling analysis and environmental kuznets curve modelling of provincial level co2 emissions and economic growth in china a case study abstract guangdong is one of the most representative provinces of china in terms of reflecting how the provincial level co2 emissions dynamically evolve with economic development during the process of industrialisation and urbanisation the present study combines decoupling analysis with environmental kuznets curve ekc modelling to systematically explore the interactions between co2 emissions and economic growth in guangdong from the short to long terms aiming to provide the referential significance of low carbon development to other chinese provinces empirical results indicate that co2 economy interactions in guangdong dynamically changed with time performing an effect of expansive weak decoupling during 1995 2014 and having a potential to achieve a strong decoupling in the long run the decoupling states of various sectors and their contributions to the provincial overall decoupling differed greatly and varied by time and household and service sectors played increasingly important roles overall the decoupling effect of provincial co2 emissions is distinctly affected by the stage of industrialisation and urbanisation renewable energy utilisation as well as low carbon technical progress therefore promoting co2 economy decoupling at the provincial level should be specific to the feature and development reality of various provinces

the effects of government spending on deforestation due to agricultural land expansion and co2 related emissions this paper examines the effect of changes in government spending level and composition on deforestation due to agricultural land expansion and related carbon dioxide emissions our theoretical model shows an unintended consequence from increased government spending and widening social safety nets in developing countries where agricultural land expansion significantly affects forest cover there is an increase in deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions from land use change our empirical tests show that an increase in total government spending significantly increases forest land clearing for agricultural production in the short run leading to more carbon dioxide emissions however there is no long run statistically significant effect on the steady state forest cover and carbon dioxide emissions

determinants of deforestation and the economics of protection an application to mexico we estimate the probability of deforestation at the plot level for chiapas and oaxaca two poor mexican states with high levels of biodiversity results highlight the importance of physio geographic endowments as well as policy variables and allow to test explicitly for aggregation bias they also suggest that if combined with information on the biodiversity value of specific plots such models could be of great relevance for policy by allowing to identify the ex ante risk of deforestation copyright 2002 oxford university press

the economics of non convex ecosystems introduction the word convexity is ubiquitous in economics but absent from economics in this paper we explain why and show what difference it makes to economic analysis if ecosystem non convexities are taken seriously a simple proof is provided of the connection between self similarity and power laws we also provide an introduction to each of the papers in the symposium and draw out the way in which they form a linked set of contributions

macroeconomic conditions in the u s and congressional voting on environmental policy 1970 2008 using the environmental scorecard ratings of congressmen and senators published annually by the league of conservation voters we explore empirically whether political support for pro environment legislation aggregated across each legislative body is sensitive over time to changing economic conditions that is whether there is a political trade off between economic conditions and the environment using lcv scorecard ratings from 1970 to 2008 we find evidence consistent across both the house and senate that political support for the environment is related to per capita income but this general tendency can be decomposed into sharp differences by party

the ecological footprint of poverty alleviation evidence from mexico s oportunidades program abstract we study the consequences of poverty alleviation programs for environmental degradation we exploit the community level eligibility discontinuity for a conditional cash transfer program in mexico to identify the impacts of income increases on deforestation and use the program s initial randomized rollout to explore household responses we find that additional income raises consumption of land intensive goods and increases deforestation the observed production response and deforestation increase are larger in communities with poor road infrastructure this suggests that better access to markets disperses environmental harm and that the full effects of poverty alleviation on the environment can be observed only where poor infrastructure localizes them

towards an integrated framework for development and environment policy the dynamics of environmental kuznets curves abstract environmental kuznets curves ekcs have recently received considerable attention in development and environment policy but little is known on how the interaction between ecological and economic factors may result in an ekc or other qualitatively different outcomes we introduce a restricted class of vector valued differential equations for representing the evolution of socioeconomic and environmental variables which influence or are influenced by the process of economic development our model includes not only the complete path of each variable over time but also the highly critical interactions among multiple variables we demonstrate analytically and numerically that among a multiplicity of possible outcomes an inverted u pattern can only be obtained under specific circumstances and requires attention to the multiple factors which form the economic environmental system rather than a single dominant one

poverty policies and deforestation the case of mexico this study examines the determinants and policy implications of deforestation in mexico and includes a brief review of the relevant empirical literature and a description of the theoretical model land use patterns and socioeconomic and physiogeographic factors are determinants data were obtained from digital maps of land use and soils and the 1990 population and 1991 agricultural censuses a simple 2 period equation formalizes the relationship between deforestation and poverty government policies and local land tenure in period 1 representative producers in municipalities have 4 options in allocating labor time wage generation agricultural production deforestation on land without clear property rights and investment in technology during period 2 the options are to farm on available land and deforested areas or work in the wage sector findings reveal that 1 communal land tenure ownership by the ejido did not increase deforestation 2 pricing that favors maize production which is very land intensive increased deforestation and technical assistance reduced deforestation and 3 poverty was related to higher rates of deforestation prices were the most important immediate factor in unsustainable resource use but other factors had an impact the government policy mix did not support sustainable development reduced subsidies would benefit the environment the government should provide safety nets to increase the level of rural investment and reduce poverty and should improve land productivity with technical inputs trade liberalization and elimination of subsidies should be sensitive to the poors need for real wages

land use and income diversification comparing traditional and colonist populations in the brazilian amazon this article compares and analyzes land use and income diversification among two distinct groups of farmers in the brazilian amazon recent colonists in ouro preto do oeste rondonia and traditional long term residents along the tapajos river para we investigate the hypothesis that farmers who diversify their cash income sources clear less forest on an annual basis and we compare these livelihood choices across colonist and traditional populations in particular we develop a conceptual model based on the household production framework and use econometric models to identify determinants of diversification and forest clearing we find that diversification of agricultural cash crops is negatively correlated with forest clearing by colonists providing limited evidence for the hypothesis other significant covariates of diversification and forest clearing include cash income levels stage in family life cycle cattle ownership and chemical inputs differences in these variables and differences in household response to these variables explain variation in diversification and forest clearing across the two populations

trade policies economic growth and the direct causes of deforestation by ramon lopez gregmar i galinato please send correspondence to ramon lopez 2200 symons hall university of maryland college park md 20742 email rlopez arec umd edu tel 301 405 1281 fax 301 314 9091 gregmar i galinato 2200 symons hall university of maryland college park md 20742 email ggalinato arec umd edu tel 301 405 0477 fax 301 314 9091

the income inequality and carbon emissions trade off revisited abstract this paper investigates the marginal effect of income inequality on carbon emissions per capita we use a panel consisting of 68 countries over a 50 year period from 1961 to 2010 we report estimates that support the hypothesis that there is a trade off between carbon emissions per capita and income inequality this trade off is not homogeneous across countries and depends upon the level of development measured by income per capita using panel smooth transition regression we find that this relationship is negative for countries with low to moderate income per capita but becomes slightly positive after passing a threshold located around fifteen thousand 2011 us dollars moreover the inequality elasticity of emissions per capita is comparable in magnitude to its income elasticity therefore both inequality and income levels are crucial to define policies to reduce carbon emissions this implies a challenge to policymakers who pursue to reduce both income inequality and carbon emissions

ownership risk investment and the use of natural resources the effect of insecure ownership on ordinary investment and natural resource use is examined insecure ownership is postulated to depend on the type of government regime in power and the prevalence of political violence or instability the political determinants of economy wide investment are estimated from cross country data and the results are used to form an index of ownership security when introduced into empirical models of natural resource use this index has a significant and quantitatively important effect on the use of forests and petroleum contrary to conventional wisdom ownership risk slows resource use in some circumstances

does poverty constrain deforestation econometric evidence from peru this paper examines the relationship between income and land clearing for households living in tropical forest regions a simple model of the agricultural household that clears land for agriculture is developed to investigate the relationship between lagged income and cleared land holdings analysis of panel data from peru suggests that lagged income is positively correlated with clearing though at a decreasing rate and because of labor market constraints clearing is positively correlated with household labor availability this work suggests that small increases in the incomes of the poorest are unlikely to reduce deforestation in this context

environmental motivations for migration population pressure poverty and deforestation in the philippines this paper uses a multinomial discrete choice model and data from the philippines to examine migrant choice between alternative destinations travel costs and perceived opportunities at the upland frontier are more important than general upland plus lowland destination attributes that indicate more developed social infrastructure or greater expected welfare for example migration streams are larger to destinations where the public share of forestland and the road system are larger these features also characterize regions of more rapid deforestation therefore emigration policies must recognize their effects on deforestation at the frontier and their anticipated indirect effects on downstream environments excerpt

deforestation property rights and international trade deforestation primarily affects developing countries most developing countries share two characteristics 1 trade liberalization reforms in the last two decades and 2 weak property rights and limited rule of law this paper investigates this second best world first in a stylized model in which trade distortions are eliminated in an economy whose natural resources are subject to open access second empirically in an estimation exercise that disentangles the direct effect of trade on deforestation rates and an indirect effect through its interaction with ownership security in accordance with the theory the results show that only the indirect effect is significant

deforestation and the environmental kuznets curve an institutional perspective institutions for secure property rights and better environmental policies for moving the system towards a sustainable growth path can reduce the height of an environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship between income and deforestation this study examines the impact of these specific institutional factors on the ekc relationship for deforestation across latin american african and asian countries the factors related to agricultural production population economy and governmental policies of each country are hypothesised to affect deforestation results of the latin american countries show significant evidence of an ekc relationship for deforestation and also relevance of the institutional factors to reduce the rate of deforestation improvements in institutions for secure property rights and better environmental policies can thus significantly reduce the rate of deforestation without hindering the level of economic growth evidence also suggests that the effect of agricultural production on deforestation could be halted by strengthening institutional factors there was found to be complementarity between the institutional factors and forest sector polices and an additive effect between the institutional factors and forest products export promotion policies which could also eventually reduce the rate of deforestation

changing concepts of land in economic theory from single to multi disciplinary approaches abstract the role of land in economic theory is surveyed both from a conceptual and historical perspective land has been incorporated in economic theories in various ways originally land used by agriculture was the main motivation for an economic treatment of land this was gradually extended with various other land use categories neoclassical economic theory gave less attention to land use generally regarding land as a production factor of relatively little importance nevertheless specialized sub fields within economics such as regional and urban economics met the demand for explicit spatial analysis including land use considerations attention for environmental and resource problems has stimulated new perspectives on and conceptualizations of land in economic analysis this involves the interaction with other disciplines as well as the use of spatially disaggregated methods of analysis awareness of the richness of ideas on land in economic theory can contribute to enhanced environmental research

economic structure development policy and environmental quality an empirical analysis of environmental kuznets curves with chinese municipal data in many cases the relationship between environmental pollution and economic development can be generally depicted by an inverted u shaped curve or an environmental kuznets curve where pollution increases with income at the beginning and decreases after a certain level of income however what determine the shape of an enviornmental kuznets curve such as the height and the turning point of the curve have not been thoroughly studied a good understanding of the determinants is vitally important to the development community especially for the developing world where income growth is a high priority and yet environmental pollution also needs to be carefully controlled this study analyzes the impacts of economic structure development strategy and environmental regulation on the shape of the environmental kuznets curve with a city level panel dataset obtained from china the results show that economic structure development strategy and environmental regulation can all have important implications on the relationship between environmental environmental quality and economic development but the impacts can be different at different development stages

semi radial technical efficiency measurement semi radial efficiency measurement combines technical efficiency as captured by the classical farrell measure with an economically meaningful mix efficiency component the semi radial evaluation we propose proceeds in two steps first we build on the price interpretation of the generally accepted koopmans efficiency notion to characterize appropriate benchmarks next we present both a quantity based distance measure and its dual price based equivalent to evaluate the mix efficiency factor the type of measures we propose may e g be used to provide a price rationale for the zieschang technical efficiency evaluation procedure

nonlinearities and heterogeneity in environmental quality an empirical analysis of deforestation we use a panel data set of 59 developing countries over the 1972 1994 period to study the deforestation process relying on both parametric and semiparametric models we examine nonlinearities and heterogeneity in the deforestation process we first study the existence of an environmental kuznets curve ekc and then analyze determinants of deforestation our data sample provides no evidence of an ekc we also find that political institution failures may worsen the deforestation process in developing countries

redd and forest transition tunneling through the environmental kuznets curve abstract international attention is focused on finding ways to reduce emissions from deforestation because of the emerging concerns over climate change however the causes of deforestation are rooted in current economic and development paradigms the causes of deforestation also vary across different geographical regions and have implications for the forest transition attempts to reach an international agreement on curbing deforestation have achieved little success despite over 30 years of un negotiations new initiatives from redd reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation could provide financial incentives to curb deforestation hence alternative development paths for forest cover changes and forest transition are analyzed for the redd policy within the framework of an environmental kuznets curve ekc for deforestation the ekc models are estimated for geographical regions of latin america africa and asia the results based on the panel data analysis of 43 countries covering the period 1970 1994 provides evidence that an inverted u shaped ekc fits for latin america and africa while a u shaped ekc applies to asia the results also indicate that strengthening agricultural and forestry sector policies are important for curbing deforestation the ekc models estimates could provide guidance for decisions on financing the redd policy as specific to each region

compensation for meaningful participation in climate change control a modest proposal and empirical analysis abstract the debate over an international climate change regime has thus far focused primarily on efficiency concerns in developed countries this paper suggests a means by which equity concerns may be addressed in the ongoing negotiations a system of transfers is developed that is motivated by the difference between the damage caused by a country and the damage suffered by that country as a result of climate change illustrative calculations of the magnitude and direction of these transfers are made we find that in general transfers flow from temperate to tropical countries but that the degree of uncertainty associated with these calculations is very large

water use and economic growth reconsidering the environmental kuznets curve relationship abstract predictions of national and global water use have been criticized for being inaccurate and for not taking into consideration economic development of the little research that does address water use as a function of economic development results are inconsistent but much claims to find clear evidence of an environmental kuznets curves ekc or inverted u type relationship this research attempts to elucidate the relationship between income growth and freshwater use by a evaluating a variety of cross sectional and panel datasets on water withdrawals and consumptive use b employing both traditional least squares and non parametric regression analysis the latter of which offers the advantage of not assuming a given functional form c testing both per capita and total water use and d comparing water withdrawals to consumptive use the research finds some support for the existence of an ekc but results are highly dependent on choice of datasets and statistical technique results are also sector specific and ekc curves prove to be poor indicators of individual country behavior as such the study points to limitations of ekcs in terms of water use policy and planning

globalization and the connection of remote communities a review of household effects and their biodiversity implications abstract the remote regions of the world provide refuge to a disproportionate amount of the earth s biodiversity as globalization continues isolated human communities in these regions are increasingly connected to global market migration and technology networks we review the diffuse literature on the household effects of changing market access migration and technology adoption in remote regions and implications for native biodiversity market access affects biodiversity in remote communities through changes in household economics and social networks migration either to or from remote settlements affects biodiversity through changes in population remittances human capital and social networks finally we consider effects due to production public infrastructure and information and communication technologies there is much ambiguity surrounding these causal pathways and thus we also examine the roles of various ecological household community and institutional mediating factors in determining the impacts of global connection finally we explore the limitations of our current knowledge and research practices and propose directions for future work to address key uncertainties in theory and evidence as well as weaknesses in methodological approaches we recommend a broad and interdisciplinary mode of inquiry as the best means toward clarifying globalization s impacts on human settlements and the biodiversity harbored in the earth s remaining remote regions

green investment trends and determinants abstract this paper fills a gap in the macroeconomic literature on renewable sources of energy it offers a definition of green investment and analyzes the trends and determinants of this investment over the last decade for 35 advanced and emerging countries we use a new multi country historical dataset and find that green investment has become a key driver of the energy sector and that its rapid growth is now mostly driven by china our econometric results suggest that green investment is boosted by economic growth a sound financial system conducive to low interest rates and high fuel prices we also find that some policy interventions such as the introduction of carbon pricing schemes or feed in tariffs which require use of green energy have a positive and significant impact on green investment other interventions such as biofuel support do not appear to be associated with higher green investment

the environmental kuznets curve does one size fit all abstract this paper uses a new panel data set on state level sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from 1929 1994 to test the appropriateness of the one size fits all reduced form regression approach commonly used in the environmental kuznets curve literature empirical results provide initial evidence that an inverted u shape characterizes the relationship between per capita emissions and per capita incomes at the state level parameter estimates suggest however that previous studies which restrict cross sections to undergo identical experiences over time may be presenting statistically biased results

co2 emissions energy consumption and output in france abstract this paper examines the dynamic causal relationships between pollutant emissions energy consumption and output for france using cointegration and vector error correction modelling techniques we argue that these variables are strongly inter related and therefore their relationship must be examined using an integrated framework the results provide evidence for the existence of a fairly robust long run relationship between these variables for the period 1960 2000 the causality results support the argument that economic growth exerts a causal influence on growth of energy use and growth of pollution in the long run the results also point to a uni directional causality running from growth of energy use to output growth in the short run

spillovers from high value agriculture for exports on land use in developing countries evidence from madagascar high value agriculture for exports is increasingly important in developing countries in a case study of contract farming for exports of vegetables from madagascar strong spillover effects of these trade opportunities on land use are found to exist using a matched plot sampling design the productivity of rice the main domestically consumed staple is shown to be two thirds higher on fields that were contracted during the off season for the production of vegetables this increase in yields is linked to an increase of soil fertility due to the application of fertilizer and compost which farmers did not use prior to the contracts although agricultural output goes up significantly labor productivity stays the same suggesting that there is greater labor absorption on existing land and the diffusion of this type of technology at a larger scale throughout madagascar would be expected to substantially decrease incentives to deforest by increasing wages and to boost productivity of existing lands relative to newly deforested ones

economic growth and land use changes the declining amount of wilderness land in norway abstract the paper presents the evidence and analyses of macroeconomic factors explaining the reduction of wilderness land in norway the analysis is at the county level 18 counties for the years 1988 and 1994 and the regressions are carried out as cross section models as well as pooled fixed effects models using a new and probably unique database that categorizes the total area in norway into four zones of distance from larger technical installations wilderness land has been defined in three ways reflecting different qualities of the same type of natural resource land as more than 5 3 and 1 km from closest man made encroachment respectively the explanatory variables comprise gdp per capita gdp per capita squared and population density the main finding from the cross sections analysis is that the relative amount of wilderness land wilderness land as a fraction of the total area within each county is negatively related to the level of economic activity as measured by gdp per capita secondly the fixed effects model reveals a negative relationship between economic growth and the reduction of wilderness land these effects are tighter for wilderness land defined within a short distance from existing encroachments a high level of economic activity and high economic growth per capita is therefore associated with less wilderness land and hence the study gives no support for any environmental kuznets curve ekc relationships

the stork the plow rural social structure and tropical deforestation in poor countries abstract several authoritative sources attribute deforestation in poor countries to the actions of the rural poor others argue that this is tantamount to blaming the victim and directing attention away from the fundamental causes inequality in landholding tenure insecurity and landlessness of deforestation unfortunately there are no statistical tests of the impact of these rural political economy variables on deforestation this paper uses a model of deforestation based on rural household labor allocation decisions to empirically assess how those decisions interact with the structure of rural political economy to determine the extent of deforestation in poor countries cross country multiple regression equations suggest that policies to intensify smallholder agriculture can slow population movement to the agricultural frontier but regression results also show that this outcome depends on the degree of equality in the distribution of landholdings and the extent of rural rootlessness these findings have two important implications for public policy first they suggest that efforts to slow deforestation must start with an understanding of the behavior of the millions of small farmers who now deforest second they suggest that political economy interpretations of deforestation need to taken more seriously by those trying to conserve forested areas