IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v15y2023i4p3738-d1072266.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis for Colombia: Impact of Economic Development on Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Ecological Footprint

Author

Listed:
  • Jorge A. Acevedo-Ramos

    (Department of Industrial Engineering, University of los Andes, Cra 1 Este No 19A-40, Bogota 110110, Colombia)

  • Carlos F. Valencia

    (Department of Industrial Engineering, University of los Andes, Cra 1 Este No 19A-40, Bogota 110110, Colombia)

  • Carlos D. Valencia

    (Department of Industrial Engineering, University of los Andes, Cra 1 Este No 19A-40, Bogota 110110, Colombia)

Abstract

Climate change has become a significant concern for developing countries given the risk that it poses to energy and food independence, and to general productivity. Despite having an energy system with low carbon intensity when compared to other Latin American countries, Colombia is already facing climate change impacts and requires urgent efforts to mitigate them. As a developing country, the challenge is bigger as policies for economic growth should be in line with the global commitment of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. With the aim of contributing to the design of climate policies by using data driven methodologies and scientific evidence, this study assesses the impact of economic development on the environment by examining the validity of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for Colombia. Statistically validated and stable autoregressive distributed lag models are estimated for three different environmental indicators: carbon dioxide emissions, methane emissions, and the ecological footprint. Moreover, the effects of other variables such as urbanization, foreign direct investment, the value added by the agricultural and industrial sectors, and energy use are analyzed with dynamic simulations. To the best of our knowledge, there are no reports of EKC estimation using these variables in statistically validated models for Colombia; thus, this paper adds to the scientific evidence of the EKC hypothesis in developing countries. Empirical evidence supports a long-run equilibrium relationship among investigated variables and the existence of an inverted U-shaped EKC relationship between gross domestic product (GDP) and methane emissions, and GDP and the ecological footprint. The results of this paper show that shifting to renewable energy sources and leveraging the use of cleaner technologies in agricultural and industrial sectors are key factors for economic growth without harming the environment, which has important scientific value because of its evidence-based approach for public policy making in developing countries, particularly Colombia.

Suggested Citation

  • Jorge A. Acevedo-Ramos & Carlos F. Valencia & Carlos D. Valencia, 2023. "The Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis for Colombia: Impact of Economic Development on Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Ecological Footprint," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-23, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:4:p:3738-:d:1072266
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/4/3738/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/4/3738/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Beckerman, Wilfred, 1992. "Economic growth and the environment: Whose growth? whose environment?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 481-496, April.
    2. Fodha, Mouez & Zaghdoud, Oussama, 2010. "Economic growth and pollutant emissions in Tunisia: An empirical analysis of the environmental Kuznets curve," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 1150-1156, February.
    3. Grossman, G.M & Krueger, A.B., 1991. "Environmental Impacts of a North American Free Trade Agreement," Papers 158, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Public and International Affairs.
    4. Breusch, T S, 1978. "Testing for Autocorrelation in Dynamic Linear Models," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(31), pages 334-355, December.
    5. Jo Thori Lind & Halvor Mehlum, 2010. "With or Without U? The Appropriate Test for a U‐Shaped Relationship," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 72(1), pages 109-118, February.
    6. M. Hashem Pesaran & Yongcheol Shin & Richard J. Smith, 2001. "Bounds testing approaches to the analysis of level relationships," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(3), pages 289-326.
    7. Schwert, G William, 2002. "Tests for Unit Roots: A Monte Carlo Investigation," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 20(1), pages 5-17, January.
    8. Fei, Li & Dong, Suocheng & Xue, Li & Liang, Quanxi & Yang, Wangzhou, 2011. "Energy consumption-economic growth relationship and carbon dioxide emissions in China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 568-574, February.
    9. Paresh Kumar Narayan & Russell Smyth, 2006. "What Determines Migration Flows From Low‐Income To High‐Income Countries? An Empirical Investigation Of Fiji–U.S. Migration 1972–2001," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 24(2), pages 332-342, April.
    10. Sarkodie, Samuel Asumadu & Ozturk, Ilhan, 2020. "Investigating the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis in Kenya: A multivariate analysis," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    11. Calderón, Silvia & Alvarez, Andrés Camilo & Loboguerrero, Ana María & Arango, Santiago & Calvin, Katherine & Kober, Tom & Daenzer, Kathryn & Fisher-Vanden, Karen, 2016. "Achieving CO2 reductions in Colombia: Effects of carbon taxes and abatement targets," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 575-586.
    12. Andrew Q. Philips, 2018. "Have Your Cake and Eat It Too? Cointegration and Dynamic Inference from Autoregressive Distributed Lag Models," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 62(1), pages 230-244, January.
    13. Paresh Kumar Narayan, 2005. "The saving and investment nexus for China: evidence from cointegration tests," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(17), pages 1979-1990.
    14. Breusch, T S & Pagan, A R, 1979. "A Simple Test for Heteroscedasticity and Random Coefficient Variation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(5), pages 1287-1294, September.
    15. Jarque, Carlos M. & Bera, Anil K., 1980. "Efficient tests for normality, homoscedasticity and serial independence of regression residuals," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 6(3), pages 255-259.
    16. Shafik, Nemat & Bandyopadhyay, Sushenjit, 1992. "Economic growth and environmental quality : time series and cross-country evidence," Policy Research Working Paper Series 904, The World Bank.
    17. Lee, Chien-Chiang & Chiu, Yi-Bin & Sun, Chia-Hung, 2010. "The environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for water pollution: Do regions matter?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 12-23, January.
    18. Hu, Hui & Xie, Nan & Fang, Debin & Zhang, Xiaoling, 2018. "The role of renewable energy consumption and commercial services trade in carbon dioxide reduction: Evidence from 25 developing countries," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 1229-1244.
    19. Jaunky, Vishal Chandr, 2011. "The CO2 emissions-income nexus: Evidence from rich countries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1228-1240, March.
    20. Pablo-Romero, María del P. & De Jesús, Josué, 2016. "Economic growth and energy consumption: The Energy-Environmental Kuznets Curve for Latin America and the Caribbean," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 1343-1350.
    21. Zambrano-Monserrate, Manuel A. & Silva-Zambrano, Carlos A. & Davalos-Penafiel, Jose L. & Zambrano-Monserrate, Andrea & Ruano, Maria Alejandra, 2018. "Testing environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis in Peru: The role of renewable electricity, petroleum and dry natural gas," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 82(P3), pages 4170-4178.
    22. Ahmad, Ashfaq & Zhao, Yuhuan & Shahbaz, Muhammad & Bano, Sadia & Zhang, Zhonghua & Wang, Song & Liu, Ya, 2016. "Carbon emissions, energy consumption and economic growth: An aggregate and disaggregate analysis of the Indian economy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 131-143.
    23. Yi-Bin Chiu, 2012. "Deforestation and the Environmental Kuznets Curve in Developing Countries: A Panel Smooth Transition Regression Approach," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 60(2), pages 177-194, June.
    24. Kivyiro, Pendo & Arminen, Heli, 2014. "Carbon dioxide emissions, energy consumption, economic growth, and foreign direct investment: Causality analysis for Sub-Saharan Africa," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 595-606.
    25. Soytas, Ugur & Sari, Ramazan & Ewing, Bradley T., 2007. "Energy consumption, income, and carbon emissions in the United States," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(3-4), pages 482-489, May.
    26. Markus M. Bugge & Teis Hansen & Antje Klitkou, 2016. "What Is the Bioeconomy? A Review of the Literature," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(7), pages 1-22, July.
    27. Cesar Augusto Ruiz–Agudelo & German Sánchez Pérez & Jorge Enrique Sáenz & Luz Aydée Higuera Cárdenas, 2019. "Biodiversity and growth in Colombia, 1995–2015: an approach from the environmental kuznets hypothesis," Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 8(1), pages 17-31, January.
    28. Poumanyvong, Phetkeo & Kaneko, Shinji, 2010. "Does urbanization lead to less energy use and lower CO2 emissions? A cross-country analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 434-444, December.
    29. Laron K. Williams & Guy D. Whitten, 2011. "Dynamic simulations of autoregressive relationships," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 11(4), pages 577-588, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Shahbaz, Muhammad & Haouas, Ilham & Hoang, Thi Hong Van, 2019. "Economic growth and environmental degradation in Vietnam: Is the environmental Kuznets curve a complete picture?," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 197-218.
    2. Anh-Tu Nguyen & Shih-Hao Lu & Phuc Thanh Thien Nguyen, 2021. "Validating and Forecasting Carbon Emissions in the Framework of the Environmental Kuznets Curve: The Case of Vietnam," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(11), pages 1-38, May.
    3. Muhammad Shahbaz & Avik Sinha, 2019. "Environmental Kuznets curve for CO2emissions: a literature survey," Journal of Economic Studies, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 46(1), pages 106-168, January.
    4. Faridul, Islam & Muhammad, Shahbaz, 2012. "Is There an Environmental Kuznets Curve for Bangladesh?," MPRA Paper 38490, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 30 Apr 2012.
    5. Azad Haider & Wimal Rankaduwa & Muhammad Iftikhar ul Husnain & Farzana Shaheen, 2022. "Nexus between Agricultural Land Use, Economic Growth and N 2 O Emissions in Canada: Is There an Environmental Kuznets Curve?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-23, July.
    6. Sunde, Tafirenyika, 2018. "Revisiting the Environmental Kuznets Curve and the Role of Energy Consumption: The Case of Namibia," MPRA Paper 86507, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Shahbaz, Muhammad & Sinha, Avik, 2019. "Environmental Kuznets Curve for CO2 emission: A survey of empirical literature," MPRA Paper 100257, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2019.
    8. Le Hoang Phong & Dang Thi Bach Van & Ho Hoang Gia Bao, 2018. "The Role of Globalization on CO2 Emission in Vietnam Incorporating Industrialization, Urbanization, GDP per Capita and Energy Use," International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, Econjournals, vol. 8(6), pages 275-283.
    9. Islam, Faridul & Shahbaz , Muhammad & Butt, Muhammad Sabihuddin, 2013. "Is There an Environmental Kuznets Curve for Bangladesh? Evidence from ARDL Bounds Testing Approach," Bangladesh Development Studies, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), vol. 36(4), pages 1-23, December.
    10. Shahbaz, Muhammad & Mutascu, Mihai & Azim, Parvez, 2013. "Environmental Kuznets curve in Romania and the role of energy consumption," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 165-173.
    11. Muhammad Bilal Khan & Hummera Saleem & Malik Shahzad Shabbir & Xie Huobao, 2022. "The effects of globalization, energy consumption and economic growth on carbon dioxide emissions in South Asian countries," Energy & Environment, , vol. 33(1), pages 107-134, February.
    12. Tiwari, Aviral Kumar & Shahbaz, Muhammad & Adnan Hye, Qazi Muhammad, 2013. "The environmental Kuznets curve and the role of coal consumption in India: Cointegration and causality analysis in an open economy," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 18(C), pages 519-527.
    13. Shahbaz, Muhammad & Sbia, Rashid & Hamdi, Helmi, 2013. "The Environmental cost of Skiing in the Desert? Evidence from Cointegration with unknown Structural breaks in UAE," MPRA Paper 48007, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 03 Jul 2013.
    14. Onafowora, Olugbenga A. & Owoye, Oluwole, 2014. "Bounds testing approach to analysis of the environment Kuznets curve hypothesis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 47-62.
    15. Bekhet, Hussain Ali & Othman, Nor Salwati, 2018. "The role of renewable energy to validate dynamic interaction between CO2 emissions and GDP toward sustainable development in Malaysia," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 47-61.
    16. Bilgili, Faik & Koçak, Emrah & Bulut, Ümit, 2016. "The dynamic impact of renewable energy consumption on CO2 emissions: A revisited Environmental Kuznets Curve approach," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 838-845.
    17. Abid Rashid Gill & Kuperan K. Viswanathan & Sallahuddin Hassan, 2018. "A test of environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) for carbon emission and potential of renewable energy to reduce green house gases (GHG) in Malaysia," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 1103-1114, June.
    18. Zambrano-Monserrate, Manuel A. & Silva-Zambrano, Carlos A. & Davalos-Penafiel, Jose L. & Zambrano-Monserrate, Andrea & Ruano, Maria Alejandra, 2018. "Testing environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis in Peru: The role of renewable electricity, petroleum and dry natural gas," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 82(P3), pages 4170-4178.
    19. Pata, Ugur Korkut, 2018. "The influence of coal and noncarbohydrate energy consumption on CO2 emissions: Revisiting the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis for Turkey," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 1115-1123.
    20. C. Seri & A. de Juan Fernandez, 2021. "The relationship between economic growth and environment. Testing the EKC hypothesis for Latin American countries," Papers 2105.11405, arXiv.org.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:4:p:3738-:d:1072266. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.