Environmental Kuznets Curve Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Environmental Kuznets flex - Essay ExampleOn the separate end of the continuum, economists advocate that progress in technology on with sustainability of innate resources would lead to little reliance on natural environmental resources thus, frugal product ought to be there (Beckerman, 1992). As noted by (Shafik, 1994), empirical evidence was lacking to support either of the in a higher place two arguments. Furthermore, much difficulty was faced in operationally defining the dimensions of environmental fictional character. Although no virtuoso parameter can be used to define environmental quality, a combination of parameters has been developed for environmental deprivation in order to demonst sum up the effect of economic harvesting on the quality of environment. Amongst matchless of the first studies conducted in this regard were those of the World Development Report. As shown in Appendix 1, some dimensions of environmental deprivation (including emissions of carbon dioxi de and solid waste pollution) are highly correlated with income, meaning that they append as income increases in other words, in terms of these dimensions, economic growth has a negative effect on environment. Others (including lack of safe drinking water and sanitation facilities) tend to decrease as income increases, implying that economic growth can be used as an instrument for enhancing quality of environment. ... Firstly, growth is demonstrated to have what is called a plateful impact on environment that is, the larger the size of economic activity the larger the rate of environmental degradation (Grossman, 1995). This is due to the fact that an increase in income is the product of increasing factor inputs and natural resources of which waste and environmental degradation is a by-product (Grossman, 1995). Secondly, the positive effect on environment of economic growth is what is known as the composition effect that is, as income increases, structural economic changes tend to increase the proportion of environmentally friendly practices in the economic system (Grossman, 1995). Thus, as per the combination of these two effects, environmental quality tends to go down due to structural economic changes in the economy that is in transition from unpolished to urban and from agricultural to a largely industrial structure but starts to improve as the economy undergoes a second structural change from heavy industrial processes to technology-intensive ones (Panayotou, 1993). Finally, the technological advancement that accompanies economic growth and the resulting increased expenditure on research and development leads to the adoption of cleaner, environmentally friendly technology which enhances the environmental quality. This is termed as the technique effect (Grossman, 1995). As the Environmental Kuznets Curve suggests, the inverted U relationship betwixt quality of environment and economic growth implies that the harmful impact on environment ( as per the s cale effect) is explicit during the early phases of growth but is ultimately offset by the positive effects of the other two effects ( composition and technique) in the later stages. It is here that the