1. Abstract
Title: Empirical study on the relationship between human development and
carbonization of economies
This study empirically demonstrates how human development is connected with the
carbonization of economies in the framework of environmental Kuznets curve, i.e. EKC,
(Kuznets, 1955), in order to provide beneficial suggestions for long-term mitigation
strategies to tackle climate change by way of achieving sustainability of growth (Afgan,
1998). The human development index (HDI) is provided by United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), which is a quantifiable indicator of overall human progress, originally
inspired by Amartya Sen (1979). “Carbonization” index is measured by the ratio of carbon
emission to energy consumption, according to Mielnick and Goldemberg (1999), which
evaluates an efficiency of energy consumption measured in terms of carbon emission, and
there is a substantial relationship between emission and energy consumption (Ang, 1999).
Major findings obtained here are summarized as follows. First, curve showing relationship
between HDI and carbonization on all countries takes an Inverted-U shape, which implies
that the EKC hypothesis is supported. Second, the curves estimated for each income group
suggest that the relationships between HDI and carbonization can be mostly explained by
income level. Although most of the curves were depicted as portions that were
appropriately cut out from EKC obtained for all the sample countries, carbonization was
constant for high income non-OECD group. Third, EKC hypothesis was supported for
many regions. Fourth, it was found that the relationships between each components of HDI
and carbonization are quite different from each other. What makes a large contribution to
generating the EKC connection is the education level. The relationship with education
index takes an inverted U shape with a relatively low turning point. Finally, results show
that political liberty index, population density, civil liberty and trade openness has
interesting results, all of which have important implications for future policy formulation.
FAISAL AHMED
Visiting Researcher, ICCCAD