The international economics of resources and resource ... - Index of

Competences for green development and leapfrogging 247
Environmental
pressure
emissions industrialized
countries
emissions catching up
countries
GDP/capita
Within the global environmental debate, it is argued that NICs do not necessarily
have to follow the emissions path of the industrialized countries. An alternative
development path can be labeled “tunneling through the EKC” or “leapfrogging”
(Munasinghe 1999; Perkins 2003; Gallagher 2006). It is argued that countries
catching up economically can realize the peak of their EKC at a much lower level of
environmental pressure than the developed countries. Developing countries could
draw on the experience of industrialized countries allowing them to leapfrog to the
latest sustainability technology. This leads to a “strategic tunnel” through the EKC.
Here, environmental economists put faith into quick technological development and
knowledge transfer as a key for reconciling environmental sustainability with
economic development in NICs.
There are several critical aspects to this concept (see Ekins 1997 or Dinda 2004
for excellent overviews). First of all, the existence of an EKC is far from certain.
Even if the data indicates that for some pollutants, e.g. SO2, an EKC exists, it is far
from certain that this holds for global problems such as CO2-emissions or material
use. Furthermore, even if such a development can be seen in the developed world, it
might just reflect a displacement effect of dirty industries to other less developed
countries. In addition, even if environmental pressure is declining, it is far from
certain that this results in a sustainable path due to the characteristic of many
environmental problems as a stock problem. Finally, there is clear evidence that such
a development does not occur naturally, but requires active policies and regulations
and an appropriate institutional setting (Dutt 2009).
With regard to transferring the EKC-concept to NICs, two additional critical
questions to this concept have to be addressed:
& First, is the interest of the NICs strong enough to push in that direction?
& Second, are the countries—given their stage of development—able to absorb the
latest sustainability technologies and thus to leapfrog?
tunnel
Fig. 1 Concept of tunneling through the Environmental Kuznets Curve
technology and
knowledge transfer
between countries