探討21世紀東南亞國家CO2與SO2環境顧茲耐曲線

Abstract

South East Asia has progressed immensely within the last decade as one of the leading regions within the international market. Even though economic development has grown rapidly over the years, the cost of rapid economic development has made South East Asia a major contributor to the already dire global environmental degradation. Many scholars have concentrated on a theory that connects the dot between environmental degradation and economic development of countries, which leads into the inverted U-shape graph known as the Environmental Kuznets Curve. Using pooling time series and cross-sectional data set to increase sampling power, this study tries to create the representation of South East Asia EKC curve between 2003-2012 in order to see the trajectory of South East Asia economic and environmental development. Concerning the practical framework of the Environmental Kuznets Curve, carbon dioxide (CO2) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) are used to represent the environmental degradation, while economic development is represented by real GDP per capita. Because South East Asia embodied different countries with economies level that vary in income level per capita, the EKC curve would then be analyzed under differences in income. The result indicates that no matter the level of income within South East Asia, CO2 and SO2 would decline as long as economic development continues to grow positively. Yet lower income countries EKC is always positioned higher in comparison with high-income countries, suggesting lower environmental abatement compared to higher income countries. The turning point for CO2 and SO2 are far above the current economic situation within South East Asia. In regards to environmental degradation to income elasticity of environmental degradation, CO2 portrayed a monotonically positive relationship while SO2 is in the process of decreasing at a monotonic rate.