Economic development and pollution emissions in Singapore: Evidence in support of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis and its implications for regional sustainability

By Qinqin Chen, David Taylor. 2020

110 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract: The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesizes an inverted U-shaped relationship between indicators of environmental quality and economic growth. The possible existence of an EKC has in the past been tested using relatively short time series of data and presumed indicators of environmental quality that can be considered sub-optimal. This paper addresses these shortcomings in investigating the extent to which economic growth and environmental quality in Singapore, the most economically developed country in Southeast Asia (SEA), accord with an EKC. A heavy metal (chromium, Cr) is here used as an indicator of environmental quality. This is because levels of a heavy metal with well-known risks to health are likely to have a much stronger relationship with perceptions of local environmental quality than, for example, CO2 emissions, and therefore likely to elicit a more rapid response from legislators. A national emission inventory (NEI) analysis quantified atmospheric Cr emissions from 1900 to 2017. Levels of Cr emissions increased rapidly during the 1960s–1980s, a period characterized by industrialization in Singapore that commenced around the time of its independence, returning to negligible levels by the 1990s as the country entered the current period of de-industrialization and economic modernization. Results of the NEI for the period post-1950, when an unbroken time series of reliable and annually comparable economic data first become available, were further subjected to econometric analysis, which confirmed the EKC hypothesis with regard to Cr emissions in Singapore. Results also suggest that the post-industrial development of Singapore may have contributed to creating pollution havens in the region. Together the findings have important implications for regional sustainable development and the governance of pollution emissions, including those that potentially have transboundary effects, more generally.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/66330ed21652b60e8421394c22cf4983ffbc8f68

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Citations in the corpus

Does the inflow of remittances and energy consumption increase CO2 emissions in the era of globalization? A global perspective (2020, methodology): “2019), economic growth (Chen and Taylor 2020), foreign direct investment (Xie et al.”
How does tourism development affect environmental pollution? (2021, background): “This study focuses on Asian Tigers because they are emerging economies (Jorgenson and Vu, 2016) who are wellknown for their green and sustainable development policies (Chen and Taylor, 2020; He et al., 2020; Park and Lee, 2017) and are popular tourist destinations (Bhati and Pearce, 2017; Chi, 2020;”
Growth impact of transition from non-renewable to renewable energy in the EU: The role of research and development expenditure (2020, background): “There has been a long-standing debate on the need for successful integration of economic growth and environmental quality [1,2].”