Análisis del impacto ambiental y el crecimiento económico mediante la curva ambiental de Kuznets

Abstract

The general welfare of people depends on many variables, such as economic growth and environment. This work assesses the relation between these variables in Ecuador using the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). This analysis is essential for formulating public policies to move the country towards a sustainable economy. Vector Autoregressive and Distributed Lagged Autoregressive econometric models were used to analyze relationships between key sectors of the economy and two different environmental degradation variables. Stata software was used to implement the models. It was found that innovations in Industry, Agriculture and Services have permanent positive effects in the long run on the Ecological Footprint (EF), while GDP per capita showed permanent negative effects in the long run. However, this is not the case for Natural Resource Depletion (NRA). Compliance with the CAK hypothesis depends on both the econometric model used and the environmental degradation variable studied. Results suggest that Ecuador is at an early stage of the CAK without a clear tipping point, supporting the found by Zambrano et al. (2016). For future research, the incorporation of variables in environmental policies and regulations is suggested. Keywords: Growth, Environment, VAR, ARDL, Sustainable Development