According to the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), economic growth will eventually cause carbon dioxide emissions to decrease. Is this the case in Sweden? A time series covering the period 1800-1995 is used to analyze the relation between carbon dioxide emissions and income per capita in Sweden. The empirical results indicate that an EKC for carbon dioxide is highly likely to exist in Sweden for the examined period. To take the analysis further, a cross-section data set is employed to examine the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions, income per capita and 4 other potentially influential variables in 75 countries. Only carbon intensity of energy is significant for carbon dioxide emissions. This implies that the utilized energy source is of importance, and it is crucial to separate energy consumption from carbon dioxide emissions. Emissions is a matter of structural aspects such as the type of industry and production a country comprise, and what type of energy that is consumed; not merely the quantity of energy. Sweden has experienced a shift in production techniques and in energy supply, and the energy-efficiency has improved during the past 100 years. It is consequently plausible to believe that it is not a critical income per capita which decreases CO 2  emissions – it is the “right” energy sources, energy efficiency and improved technology.

The Kyoto Protocol is one of the most important international climate change treaties aimed at fighting global warming. On January 1st 2005, the protocol was enforced with its first commitment period 2008-2012. However, the effectiveness of reducing CO2 emission has long been debated. The purpose of this thesis is to empirically as-sess the impact of the Kyoto Protocol on carbon dioxide reduction across countries, whether the protocol led significant difference after entering force in 2005. The data used in this thesis cover 37 Annex B countries and 148 non-annex B countries from 1990 to 2007. The models are constructed on the basis of the various contributing fac-tors to CO2 emissions and the Environmental Kuznets Curve model. The main find-ing is contrary against the result expected. The insignificant dummy variable cannot indicate that there is a “structural break” of CO2 emissions reduction after the Kyoto Protocol was implemented. The conclusion is that political agreements such as Kyoto Protocol cannot show critical effects on reducing carbon dioxide. The underlying main driving factors of CO2 emission are energy use, electricity from coal source, fossil fuel burning, in other words, industrialization. And the technology develop-ments cannot keep in pace with finding a new energy source and effectively control-ling CO2 emissions in the short run.

The world experiences large-scale ecosystems degradation in an every part of the planet - in rich as well as in and poor parts. Unstable economic conditions together with weak law enforcements make low income countries face more severe forms of natural destruction. This draws the attention on the need to design economic policies that are environmentally sound and while at the same time ensuring the well-being of their inhabitants in economic, social and natural settings. A number of countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia have experienced a unique historical period of transition from communist regimes to free democratic societies. This has been followed by numerous effects on their financial situations as economic hardships caused by the collapse of economies injected by the assistance from the Soviet and committees of socialist countries mutually aiding each other, opening up of opportunities as private ownership and market liberations. Not all countries succeeded in liberalizing their economic structures and reforming economic and political environments. Simultaneously, the natural environment underwent various effects, both positive and negative, after the Iron Curtain fell and exposed destructing effects of command and control economy. Mongolia has experienced all the hard aspects of the transition and started to climb up on the income ladder from the low income to the lower middle-income list of the World Bank, but also seen many negative price aspects of development. Water resources have been severely degraded in recent years due to anthropogenic impact. However, there are reforms taking place in water sector institutions that have recently attracted wide attention nationwide.This thesis will give detailed picture on current state of water resources in the country and the system that coordinates them. The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) is used as an approach to highlight the relationship between water resource quality and income per capita in Mongolia. This is followed by a detailed discussion on water institutions development and the coordinating mechanisms badly needed among sectors involved. The research suggests that collaborative actions are important if sustainable water management is to be reached. More generally, I recommend further research issues on the generated topic as my thesis is one of the first discussions coupling the EKC and institutional theory aspects together.

The purpose of this thesis is see if national policies regarding aimed at combating climate change could work even if international ones, such as the Kyoto Protocol, are considered to fail. The question was if environmental policies could be included as an explanatory variable for the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). The environmental polices of interest were the market-based instrument, environmental taxes.   First, the hypothesis whether or not Sweden fit the EKC theory is tested, and this proves to be the case when looking at the years 1800-1996. Second, a hypothesis was tested to see if environmental taxes can help decreasing carbon emission intensity further once a country has reached its turning point. Comparing Sweden to six other countries from the European Union show that this is the case, although environmental taxes must be one of many tools and cannot work alone.   The study shows that the role of taxes were significant, thus showing their importance for the work on climate change. It is also observed that national policies do work, while regional, or international, ones are harder to conduct. The importance of national policies is enhanced since they will be guiding countries when deciding whether or not to commit to international policies.

The simplicity of the Environmental Kuznets (EKC) curve concept motivated this study of the relationships between environmental, economic and social indicators at the country, city/regional and manufacturing facility scale. The study builds on almost 20 years of research on the EKC, which has shown conflicting results for confirmation of the EKC hypothesis that the environment first degrades, then improves, with increasing economic wealth. Most EKC studies use country-scale income or GDP as the primary economic indicator of interest; this study experiments with city/regional GDP at the local scale and a country-scale "market maturity" indicator commonly used by the corporation studied. The manufacturing facility scale analysis is new territory in the EKC literature. Firm-scale studies in the past have been just that, evaluating firm environmental performance across a specific industry. This effort evaluates manufacturing facility performance within the same firm across a set of 21 countries of interest to the corporation. This study is unique in a few other ways. Including multiple scales in the same study is not common in the EKC literature. Typically, a study would focus on one or a few indicators at one specific scale. The actual environmental and social outcome variables used here are also somewhat unique. Generally speaking, the results reported here will fall into the "mixed" bucket relative to the 20 years of existing EKC literature; however, a possible research platform is established based on the possible nesting of multiple scales within the same research effort.

<p> </p><p>The purpose of this dissertation would be to find the relationship between CO₂ emission and GDP. We found that in case of the majority of countries the CO₂emission is related to national income and follows an inverted-U shaped curve. In our analysis we used the regression technique on 139 countries within the time period 1985-2004 to model and analyze the mentioned relationship and define the variables, that describe it. As it will be proved, Environmental Kuznets Curve validate the model and our hypothesis confirm other researches, therefore the inverse-u relationship proves to be correct.</p><p> </p>

<p> </p><p> </p><p>According to the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC), economic growth will eventually cause carbon dioxide emissions to decrease. Is this the case in Sweden? A time series covering the period 1800-1995 is used to analyze the relation between carbon dioxide emissions and income per capita in Sweden. The empirical results indicate that an EKC for carbon dioxide is highly likely to exist in Sweden for the examined period. To take the analysis further, a cross-section data set is employed to examine the relationship between carbon dioxide emissions, income per capita and 4 other potentially influential variables in 75 countries. Only carbon intensity of energy is significant for carbon dioxide emissions. This implies that the utilized energy source is of importance, and it is crucial to separate energy consumption from carbon dioxide emissions. Emissions is a matter of structural aspects such as the type of industry and production a country comprise, and what type of energy that is consumed; not merely the quantity of energy. Sweden has experienced a shift in production techniques and in energy supply, and the energy-efficiency has improved during the past 100 years. It is consequently plausible to believe that it is not a critical income per capita which decreases CO</p><p>2  emissions – it is the “right” energy sources, energy efficiency and improved technology.</p><p> </p><p> </p>

O objetivo desta dissertação foi estudar os determinantes do desflorestamento e verificar empiricamente se a Expansão da Fronteira Agrícola no estado de Mato Grosso segue uma trajetória ao encontro da Curva Ambiental de Kuznets. O método utilizado para testar essa hipótese foi o de dados em painel econométrico. Este estudo se justifica devido à temática ambiental e ao caráter multidimensional do tema, como o abordado pelas ciências sociais. Os principais resultados apontam que inicialmente o uso e a ocupação da área causam desflorestamento, mas sem que ocorra crescimento do PIB per capita, em um segundo estágio, caracterizado pela instalação de atividades econômicas rentáveis, crescem tanto o desflorestamento como o PIB per capita e somente em um terceiro momento a degradação ambiental diminuirá. Esta última fase, quando verificada apenas pelo resultado econométrico induziria a um erro de interpretação, desfeito pela complementação da espacialização do processo da Expansão da Fronteira Agrícola. / The aim of this thesis was tostudy the determinants of deforestation and verify empirically if the expansion of the agricultural boundary in the State of Mato Grosso follows a trajectory to meet the environmental Kuznets Curve. The method used to test this hypothesis was the econometric panel data. This study is justified due to the environmental subject and the multidimensional character of the theme, as discussed by social sciences. The main results show that using and as well performing occupation of the area cause deforestation, nevertheless without per capita GDP increasing, in a second stage, characterized by the installation of profitable economic activities, increasing both the deforestation as the GDP per capita and only in a third environmental degradation will decrease. This last phase, when checked only by the econometric results, leads to an wrong interpretation, undone by complementing the definition of the agricultural boundary process expansion.

O objetivo desta dissertação foi estudar os determinantes do desflorestamento e verificar empiricamente se a Expansão da Fronteira Agrícola no estado de Mato Grosso segue uma trajetória ao encontro da Curva Ambiental de Kuznets. O método utilizado para testar essa hipótese foi o de dados em painel econométrico. Este estudo se justifica devido à temática ambiental e ao caráter multidimensional do tema, como o abordado pelas ciências sociais. Os principais resultados apontam que inicialmente o uso e a ocupação da área causam desflorestamento, mas sem que ocorra crescimento do PIB per capita, em um segundo estágio, caracterizado pela instalação de atividades econômicas rentáveis, crescem tanto o desflorestamento como o PIB per capita e somente em um terceiro momento a degradação ambiental diminuirá. Esta última fase, quando verificada apenas pelo resultado econométrico induziria a um erro de interpretação, desfeito pela complementação da espacialização do processo da Expansão da Fronteira Agrícola. / The aim of this thesis was tostudy the determinants of deforestation and verify empirically if the expansion of the agricultural boundary in the State of Mato Grosso follows a trajectory to meet the environmental Kuznets Curve. The method used to test this hypothesis was the econometric panel data. This study is justified due to the environmental subject and the multidimensional character of the theme, as discussed by social sciences. The main results show that using and as well performing occupation of the area cause deforestation, nevertheless without per capita GDP increasing, in a second stage, characterized by the installation of profitable economic activities, increasing both the deforestation as the GDP per capita and only in a third environmental degradation will decrease. This last phase, when checked only by the econometric results, leads to an wrong interpretation, undone by complementing the definition of the agricultural boundary process expansion.

Nos últimos anos, os impactos da poluição no meio ambiente se tornou um tema de grande relevância, uma vez que níveis desmedidos de emissões têm sido responsáveis por alterações ambientais. Muitos autores se dedicaram a estudar a relação existente entre o crescimento econômico e a poluição. Destes estudos, surgiram duas abordagens distintas: Curva Ambiental de Kuznets e convergência das emissões. A Curva Ambiental de Kuznets postula a existência de uma relação no formato U invertido entre emissões e renda. Desta forma, à medida que renda alcança um certo nível, a taxa de crescimento das emissões se reduz. Já a convergência das emissões implica em uma taxa de crescimento equilibrado no longo prazo, o que leva ao estado estacionário das emissões. Neste contexto, Brock e Taylor (2010) desenvolveram um modelo alternativo que liga estas duas metodologias. O modelo presume que, quando as emissões convergem ao estado estacionário, implicitamente ocorre o movimento descrito pela Curva Ambiental de Kuznets. O objetivo deste trabalho é estimar os dois modelos separadamente com o intuito de verificar se os resultados apontam para uma mesma direção. As estimações da CAK foram sensíveis ao modelo escolhido. Quando se utiliza a renda e a renda ao quadrado como explicativas, os coeficientes estimados apontam para uma curva no formato U invertido, com ponto de inflexão de US$ 792.805,60. Já a estimação do modelo com as variáveis renda, renda ao quadrado e renda ao cubo apresentou uma curva no formato N, e o ponto de inflexão obtido foi de US$ 6.168,88. A estimação do modelo convergência proposto por Brock e Taylor (2010) apontou evidências que ocorre convergência condicional das emissões per capita, para a maioria das estimações realizadas. / Recently the impacts of pollution on environment became a relevant topic, as great levels of emissions are responsible for environmental change. Many researchers started to study the relationship between economic growth and pollution. Two distinct approaches followed from these studies: the Environmental Kuznets Curve and the convergence of emissions. The Environmental Kuznets Curve assumes the existence of an inverted U relationship between emissions and income. As the income grows and reaches a threshold level, the growth rate of emissions goes down. The convergence of emissions implies a steady state of emissions in the long run. In this context, Brock and Taylor (2010) built an alternative model that makes a bridge between both methodologies. The model assumes that as there is convergence of emissions towards steady state, there is as a result a path similar to an Environmental Kuznets Curve. The purpose of this research is to estimate both models separately in order to verify if the results point to the same conclusions. The estimates of the Environmental Kuznets Curve were sensitive to the model chosen. As we use income and income squared as independent variables, the estimated coefficients point to an inverted U curve with a turning point at US$ 792,805.60. The estimates of the model with the variables income, income squared and income cubic reveals a N curve with a turning point at US$ 6,168.88. The estimates of the convergence model proposed by Brock and Taylor (2010) pointed to conditional convergence of emissions per capita for most of the cases.