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Does The Environmental Kuznets Curve Exist?

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Discussion piece: Does the Environmental Kuznets Curve exist? The case of carbon emissions in Indonesia, China, Australia, and United States.
The Kuznets curve is firstly introduced in 1955 by Kuznets as an inverted-U relationship between income inequality and economic development. Later it is found that the Kuznets curve is useful for describing the relationship between environmental pressure and the economic growth or known as the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) (Dinda, 2004). The hypothesis of the EKC is that at early stages of a country’s development, the quality of its environment will be deteriorated faster and getting slow down at some level of income per capita that the economic growth support the increasing of environmental performance (Stern, 2004). The EKC applies differently between countries depend on the economic growth status of the country. This essay will discuss the different appearance of the EKC using the evidences from developing and developed countries. The EKC of developing countries will show the upward slope stage of the curve because of the countries’ focus on economic growth and less protection to the environment. Conversely, the developed countries will show the later downward slope stage of the EKC as their economic growth is already high and there is more attention for environmental protection. Figure 1 The Environmental Kuznets Curve

Comparation of the EKC appearances between Indonesia, Australia, and United States
The EKC of Indonesia,

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