Urbanization-Growth-Environment: How Are They Related? An Evidence from the Global Asia-Pacific Region

Abstract

Asia and the Pacific have made rapid progress in economic growth but still have work to do in environmental degradation. Logical consequence because pursuing economic progress has raised environmental problems and has become one of the central issues for development. The Asia-Pacific region became the most significant contributor and growth in carbon dioxide emissions compared to other regions. The research objective is to analyze the impact of urbanization on environmental quality and its interaction through economic growth using the standard Dynamic Model of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag approach. The result show demonstrates consistency in developed countries and the High-Income countries categories. Urbanization has a significant negative effect on emissions, and the Growth variable is significantly positive; nevertheless, the EKC curve does not occur. Urbanization deteriorates the relationship between growth and emissions. It is not proven in developing countries and the lower and upper middle income. Equitable development needs to be carried out by every country by considering the quality and sustainable economic institutions and pro-environmental innovations, especially in developing or lower and upper-middle countries.