Air Pollution During Growth: Accounting for Governance and Vulnerability
New research on urban air pollution casts doubt on the conventional view of the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality. This view holds that pollution automatically increases until societies reach middle-income status becaus...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, D.C.
2013
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2004/08/5103503/air-pollution-during-growth-accounting-governance-vulnerability http://hdl.handle.net/10986/14162 |
| Summary: | New research on urban air pollution
casts doubt on the conventional view of the relationship
between economic growth and environmental quality. This view
holds that pollution automatically increases until societies
reach middle-income status because poor countries have
neither the institutional capacity nor the political
commitment necessary to regulate polluters. Some
policymakers and researchers have cited this model (called
the "environmental Kuznets curve," or EKC) when
arguing that developing countries should "grow first,
clean up later." However, new evidence suggests that
the EKC model is misleading because it mistakenly assumes
that strong environmental governance is not possible for
poor countries. As the authors show in this paper, the
empirical relationship between pollution and income becomes
much weaker when measures of governance are added to the
analysis. Their results also suggest that previous research
has underestimated the effect of geographic vulnerability
(climate and terrain factors) on air quality. The authors
find that weak governance and geographic vulnerability alone
can account for the crisis levels of air pollution in many
developing country cities. When these factors are combined
with income and population effects, the authors have a
sufficient explanation for the fact that some cities already
have air quality comparable to levels in OECD urban areas.
To summarize, their results suggest that the maxim
"grow first, clean up later" is too simplistic.
Appropriate urban growth strategies can steer development
toward cities with lower geographic vulnerability, and
governance reform can reduce air pollution significantly,
long before countries reach middle-income status. |
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