Emissions and economic development in small states : the role of governance

Abstract

It is well-established that carbon dioxide emissions contribute to climate change, with recent studies suggesting that a projected increase in global temperatures by 3 degrees Celsius over the pre-industrial period would result in nearly 5,800 annual deaths per year in New York City alone, with 2,500 and 2,300 deaths in Los Angeles and Miami respectively (Lo et al., 2019). Consequently, climate change has been noted to be the largest threat to human health in the 21st Century (Watts et al., 2015). Despite such health and ecological implications at the forefront of environmental concern, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have set new records in recent years, reaching levels higher than 410 parts per million (ppm) for the first quarter of 2018, higher than any prior recorded level in the last 800,000 years (Monroe, 2018). Global economic advancements through increased resource extraction and industrialised output growth over the past decade, have directly contributed to an upward historical and projected trend in our carbon footprint. A popular theoretical prediction, made by the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) is that, while environmental degradation and pollution should be present at the early stages of economic growth, beyond a certain level of income, the trend is expected to be reversed, such that, at high levels of income per capita, economic growth would drive environmental improvement. In practice, however, this theory has been disputed vigorously, with some studies reporting a positive correlation between emissions and income, particularly in large countries (e.g. Zoundi, 2017). Research on environmental degradation within the context of small states is still lagging, partly due to the lack of and/or incomplete data pertaining to small states and partly due to a “laissez-faire” approach in the light of their relatively small emissions (Moncada et al., 2018).