Air Pollution During Growth: Accounting for Governance and Vulnerability
No hay miniatura disponible
Fecha
Título de la revista
ISSN de la revista
Título del volumen
Editor
World Bank, Washington, D.C.
Resumen
Descripción
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.
Palabras clave
ABATEMENT, ABATEMENT EFFORT, AGRICULTURAL POLLUTION, AIR EMISSIONS, AIR MONITORING, AIR POLLUTANTS, AIR POLLUTION, AIR PRESSURE, AIR QUALITY, AIR QUALITY MODELS, CAPITAL STOCK, CARBON, CARBON DIOXIDE, CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS, CLEAN AIR, CLEAN TECHNOLOGY, CLIMATE, COMBUSTION, COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE, DEVELOPING COUNTRIES, DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS, ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS, ECONOMIC ACTIVITY, ELASTICITIES, EMISSIONS, EMPIRICAL RESEARCH, EMPIRICAL STUDIES, EMPIRICAL WORK, ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS, ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS, ENVIRONMENTAL KUZNETS, ENVIRONMENTAL PERFORMANCE, ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS, ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION, ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY, ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, EXPERIMENTS, GASES, GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING, GREENHOUSE GASES, HEALTH IMPACTS, HUMAN HEALTH, INCOME, INCOME ELASTICITY, INCOME INEQUALITY, INCOME LEVELS, INDUSTRIAL EMISSIONS, INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION, INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION PROJECTION SYSTEM, IRON, MARGINAL COST, METALS, MORBIDITY, MORTALITY, NATURAL RESOURCE DEGRADATION, OXYGEN, PARTICLES, PARTICULATE MATTER