アジア諸国における環境クズネッツ仮説の実証分析

フェーズ分析による経済と環境の相互関係の検証

抄録

It seems to be very natural to accept that there are three stages or phases along which the environmental problem comes into conflict between polluters and victims and finally comes to a negotiated settlement. The first phase is the animadverting stage upon the terrible environmental situation. The second phase is the institutionalization stage of judicial and administrative procedures against environmental disruption. In the third phase of the environmental development, the governmental activity against environmental issues would be tested how it is effective and if it takes them seriously.
We shall incorporate model-frameworks some specific characterizations concerning the people's eco-consciousness, governmental policy stance against environmental issues and juristic and administrative institutions. From cross-sectional view, to follow the foregoing reasoning leads us to predict that the lower levels of ‘governance index’ will be associated with higher levels of pollution. Moreover, some other non-income factors, including anti-pollution technology, are proved to be important determinants of pollution level in the economy. Hence the underlying structure model to be tested will be given by
ENVIRONMENT=f (INCOME, PREFERENCE, TECHNOLOGY, GOVERNANCE).
In the absence of direct measures for the ‘governance index’, we shall adopt some of KKZ (Kaufmann, Kraay and Zoido) indicators. The original version of KKZ indicators has developed by Kaufmann, Kraay and Zoido (1999) and we used the version in 2002.
We have estimated for each of the environmental or pollution variables. In the case of sulfur dioxide, we obtain a plausible positive correlation between income and pollution and find an effectiveness of higher technology to reduce pollutant.
Our hypothetical approach suggests that there is no logical consequence of a predictable relation between economic growth and environment, not always leading to an inverted U-shaped EKC. Statistical procedures for estimating the structural model also have proved that the hypothesis is very likely to be statistically significant, in particular for the air pollutants.
Factors of each pollutant are classified into two region categories; OECD and non-OECD countries. Emission of each pollutant in an OECD country is almost a half or two-third in a non-OECD country.
One policy implication of our findings is that environmental situation in non-OECD countries can be accompanied by improvements in non-income factors such as PREFERENCE as well as GOVERNNCE that might be propelled by economic growth in per capita income term. Accordingly, it must be important for OECD countries to lead developing countries towards achieving improvements in those factors. Our findings also prove that prompting environmental-friendly technology in non-OECD countries possibly via foreign aids and foreign direct investment is timeworn but still important political procedure. Furthermore, we found that many of developing Asian countries are still in the first phase. It is strongly recommended that in the countries still in the first or second phase, some additional policy instruments must be employed toward higher stage of environmental development.