Title: Confronting environmental quality and societal aspects: an environmental Kuznets curve analysis for Indian cities

Authors: Avik Sinha; Joysankar Bhattacharya

Addresses: Indian Institute of Management Indore, Prabandh Shikhar, Rau-Pithampur Road, Indore 453556, Madhya Pradesh, India ' Indian Institute of Management Indore, Prabandh Shikhar, Rau-Pithampur Road, Indore 453556, Madhya Pradesh, India

Abstract: Ever-growing problems of environmental degradation can be attributed to the inequality scenarios arising from the prevalent socio-economic imbalances and two of the major inequalities for the case of India in this regard are inequality in energy intensity and economic inequality. In this paper, we have taken the ambient air pollution data for 139 cities in India for the duration of 2001-2013, where sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) have been chosen as the major air pollutants. Based on the empirical evidence, it can be found that interactions between inequality and societal aspects have significant contributions towards determining environmental quality. The paper concludes that any environmental policy cannot function effectively unless it takes other developmental policies into consideration. Leaving socio-economic parameters aside, the enhancement of environmental quality can prove to be extremely difficult to achieve, the evidence of which can be found from an analysis of Indian cities.

Keywords: environmental Kuznets curve; EKC; sulphur dioxide; nitrogen dioxide; SO2; NO2; Theil index; India; gender ratio; literacy; environmental quality; cities; environmental degradation; socio-economic imbalances; energy intensity; economic inequality; air pollution; urban pollution.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGE.2016.079711

International Journal of Green Economics, 2016 Vol.10 No.1, pp.69 - 88

Received: 28 May 2015
Accepted: 24 Nov 2015

Published online: 12 Oct 2016 *

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