توسعه پایدار در پاکستان در زمینه تقاضا مصرف انرژی و تخریب محیط زیست

The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of population growth, economic growth, energy intensity (EI) growth and urbanization growth on environmental degradation in Pakistan. The paper will investigate simultaneously the effect of population growth, urbanization, energy consumption and environmental degradation on the sustainable economic growth as well. To ensure the sustainable development of the economy environmental degradation should not increase with time but be reduced or at least remain constant. If it increases, we will move further away for sustainability, while if it decreases, we will move closer towards it. The results indicate that 1% increase in GDP growth leads to 0.84% increase in growth rate of carbon dioxide emissions, and an increase of 1% in the energy intensity growth rate causes almost 0.24% increases in growth rate of CO2 emissions. As far as results of co-integrating vector normalized on GDP growth is concerned, the coefficients of EI growth and CO2 emissions growth are found to be affecting the level of development significantly and positively by 0.3% and 1.2%, respectively. This indicates that in Pakistan process of economic development is dependent on the level of energy use and the resultant of this energy use, CO2 emissions caused economic growth significantly and positively. In addition to the rapid urbanization and increased population growth affect positively to environmental degradation while negatively and significantly to the economic development in the long run.

Human-induced environmental degradation is the most troubling and complex global issue facing the world as a whole. The Earth's climate is changing at an unprecedented rate, and its future implications are wide-ranging, particularly, the security implications of changes in the natural environment. Environmental degradation is expected to have considerable impacts on natural resource systems, and thereby changes in the natural environment can affect human sustenance and economic activities. The unique combination of environmental, economic and human security concerns embodied in the environmental damage. A growing body of research has developed to explore the concept of vulnerability and its link to recent environmental degradation. The question of link or the relationship between the global environmental degradation and the sustainable economic development becomes the major issue and comes to the focal point of research. In this study we try to find out the linkage between environmental degradation and economic growth. Let us consider a certain level of income, up to which one may reasonably expect high green house gas-intensive income growth to affect adversely the environment globally. But beyond a critical level, climatic degradation may, in principle, reach a stage where further income growth becomes difficult. Thus, the people face the economic as well as social insecurity due to climate change. Climate may act as a constraint to income growth at this latter stage if the green house gas-intensive income growth process is continued. Thus, the global economy faces a serious challenge from the global climate change. To save the world economy or in other way to protect humanity, proper environmental policy should be adopted at appropriate time. Economic activity promotes wealth creation but has negative effects on the environment. The production systems currently used in industrialized countries generate vast quantities of waste and contamination, causing degradation to natural resources. These impacts are more severe when accompanied by demographic growth, as long as population increases lead to increases in energy consumption and, consequently, to greater atmospheric pollution. A number of researchers have recently considered demographic factors in order to explain the sources of air pollution. The first studies where based on cross-sectional data for only one time period. In this line, Cramer, 1998 and Cramer, 2002 and Cramer and Cheney (2000) evaluated the effects of population growth on air pollution in California and found a positive relation only for some sources of emissions but not for others. Dietz and Rosa (1997) and York, Rosa, and Dietz (2003) studied the impact of population on carbon dioxide emissions and energy use. The results from these studies indicate that the elasticity of CO2 emissions and energy use with respect to population are close to unity. In a panel data context, Shi (2003) found a direct relationship between population changes and carbon dioxide emissions in 93 countries over the period 1975–1996. A similar result was obtained by Cole and Neumayer (2004). These authors considered 86 countries during the period 1975–1998 and they found a positive link between CO2 emissions and a set of explanatory variables including population, urbanization rate, energy intensity and smaller household sizes. In addition, several studies have discussed and tested the existence of an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) where the relationship between pollution and income is considered to have an inverted U shape. These models frequently take emissions per capita for different pollutants as an endogenous variable, assuming implicitly that the elasticity emission-population is unitary. A few of them considered population density as an additional explanatory variable (e.g. Cole, Rayner, & Bates, 1997; Panayotou, 2000). However, their tests are not based on an underlying theory and testing variables individually are subject to the problem of omitted variables bias. The results obtained within this framework are not homogeneous and their validity has been questioned in recent surveys of the EKC literature (e.g. Stern, 1999 and Stern, 2003). A number of studies utilized total energy use as a proxy for total environmental impact. In this line, Cole et al. (1997) and Suri and Chapman (1998) found that energy use per capita increases monotonically with income per capita. However, when energy intensity is considered as the dependent variable, it declines with rising income or even shows a U-shaped curve (Galli, 1998). The relationship between energy use and income is a widely studied topic in the field of energy economics. The empirical findings presented in the last two decades, since the seminal article published in the late seventies by Kraft and Kraft (1978), have been mixed or conflicting. The results depend on the sample of countries, the years under analysis and the estimation techniques used. Some studies found evidence in favor of causality running from GDP to energy consumption (Kraft & Kraft, 1978), for some others no causal relationship was found (Yu & Choi, 1985; Yu & Hwang, 1984) and there are also studies showing that the causality runs in the opposite direction: from energy consumption to GDP (e.g. Lee, 2005). While Alam and Butt (2002) found evidence that there exists bidirectional causality between energy consumption and economic growth in Pakistan. The rate of urbanization and its attendant impacts differ in regions across the globe. Asia contains almost half the world's mega cities and continues to urbanize rapidly. Given its current annual growth rate, Asia's urban population is expected to double in less than 20 years. Urbanizations reflect more than demographic change. It is both driven by and profoundly influences the context and processes of development. It exerts both direct and indirect advantages in the struggle towards global sustainability and human development. The origins of many global environmental problems related to air and water pollution are located in cities—this is the urbanization–pollution linkage (Reddy, 2004). Per capita energy consumption remains low in the developing world. However, many African and Asian urban centers, is being consumed biomass fuel in a large portion of energy needs. As these countries urbanize, energy demand increases, food and other materials consumed in urban areas must be transported across greater distances. Urban manufacturing and industry also require more energy than traditional agriculture. In addition, the provision of infrastructure and services to new urban residents requires energy that is not typically consumed in rural settlements. Energy use is already high in industrialized countries and is increasing rapidly in developing countries as they industrialize. But energy can be an instrument for sustainable development with an emphasis on more efficient use of energy, and an increased use of renewable energy sources, among other measures (Reddy, 2004). The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of population growth, economic growth, energy intensity growth and urbanization growth on environmental degradation in Pakistan. The paper will investigate simultaneously the effect of population growth, urbanization, energy consumption and environmental degradation on the sustainable economic growth as well. The environmental degradation is measured as rate of growth of CO2 emissions in that they are greenhouse effect among the gases produced by fossil fuels (IPCC, 2001) and a reference parameter for the aggregation of the other greenhouse gases (often measured in terms of tones of CO2 emissions equivalent). To ensure the sustainable development of the economy environmental degradation should not increase with time but be reduced or at least remain constant. If it increases, we will move further away for sustainability, while if it decreases, we will move closer towards it. To best of our knowledge, this is the first systematic quantitative study about the relationship between the sustainable development, energy intensity and environmental degradation within the South Asian region particularly for Pakistan. We specify a model in which CO2 emissions growth rate are related with the level of economic growth, the population growth, the urbanization growth and the energy intensity growth rate. The study specify an other model in which level of economic growth is as an dependent variable related with the CO2 emissions growth, the population growth, the urbanization growth and the energy intensity growth rate. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents the theoretical framework and specifies the model. Section 3 describes the empirical analysis. Section 4 discusses the main results and Section 5 concludes.

Economic development has been accompanied by growth in the consumption of fossil fuels, with more and more coal, oil and natural gas being burned by factories and electric power plants, motor vehicles and households. The resulting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have turned into the largest source of greenhouse gases (gases that trap the infrared radiation from the earth within its atmosphere and create the risk of global warming). It is a widely accepted fact that population growth, economic development and urbanization are the principal forces driving the increase in energy demand, and this increase in energy demand has profound effect on the growth in the amount of CO2 emission leading to global warming. This paper empirically investigated the relationship among economic development, energy intensity, CO2emission, population growth and urbanization in case of Pakistan during the period 1971–2005. Results indicate that economic development in Pakistan is energy driven, which contributes considerably to CO2emissions. Results also indicate that 1% increase in economic growth in the long run will increase the CO2 emission up to 0.84% while 1% increase in CO2 emission and energy intensity will increase the level of development up to 1.2% and 0.3%, respectively. This indicates extremely inefficient energy use, which could become the biggest economic problem for Pakistan but following EKC hypothesis the situation may not reach. High rate of CO2 emissions in Pakistan is also explained by its high level of urbanization and population growth, leading to congestion and pollution problem. The paper goes further (through variance decomposition technique), decomposes the total impact of an unanticipated shock to each of the variables, beyond the sample period, into proportions attributable to shocks in the other variables, including its own. The exercise therefore enables us to examine the relative contributions of the determinants of CO2emissions in explaining the FEV of CO2emissions. The VDCs exercise provides the additional information that a substantial part of the (forecast error) variance of CO2emissions is explained by changes in energy intensity alone (13%) in the short run (at 2-year horizon), but in the long run variance of CO2emissions explained by changes in the energy intensity and economic growth is 55–56% (at 10–25-year span). The exercise also brings to light the significant and predominant role played by the CO2emissions, in explaining the variance of economic growth. For the policy prescriptions, this paper suggests that in the national policy, country should protect and preserve her own natural resources. These natural resources would be the basis for the economic activities, which lead to future economic growth and development. The country should increase the forest area up to an optimum level (at least one-third of land). Thus, the highest priority should be given to the land-use and land conversions in the national policy. Country should invest in infrastructure to exploit as yet underutilized energy resources, including natural gas, coal and hydro-electricity. There is need to investments in improved generation, distribution and consumption technology. In the longer term, strategies will be required to find alternative sources of energy. The major tasks are to remove incentives that promote environmental degradation, such as subsidies for unsustainable use of land, water and forests; to create enabling conditions to ensure that resource extraction does not harm neighboring communities; to strengthen regulations governing pollution and their enforcement and, perhaps most important, to improve environmental policy and its implementation. Linking the use of these resources in a sustainable manner to demand from a fast-growing country will enable the benefits of rapid growth. A major challenge will be to maximize efficient and sustainable use of resources. A particular concern is to minimize the impact of resource (forests, fisheries) licensing mechanisms on the livelihoods of local communities. Involving local communities in managing natural resources directly (e.g. forests, coral reefs and fisheries) has been shown to be an effective way of tackling environmental issues in some areas. Similarly, environmental regulations and their implementation merit strengthening in order to promote investment in environmental management and place limits on potentially damaging activities, such as excessive drawdown of resources, (e.g. timber, groundwater resources and fish) and pollution (including greenhouse gases). Rapid and intensive agricultural and industrial growth, together with urbanization, has increased environmental problems across the country in recent decades. The problems include deforestation, land degradation, pressure on water supplies, industrial pollution, pollution from energy generation and the problems of rapidly growing cities. Investments in renewable energy (hydro, wind, solar, biogas) will make a minor contribution, as will increased efficiency in using conventional resources. Energy use has a variety of impacts. Energy extraction and processing always involve some forms of environmental disruption including both geomorphological and ecological disruption as well as pollution. Energy use involves both pollution and other impacts such as noise from transport and land use impacts such as the construction of roads, etc. As all human activities require energy use, in fact all human impacts on the environment could be seen as the consequences of energy use. A shift from lower- to higher-quality energy sources not only reduces the total energy required to produce a unit of GNP but also may reduce the environmental impact of the remaining energy use. An obvious example would be a shift from coal use to natural gas use. Natural gas is cleaner burning and produces less carbon dioxide per unit of energy derived. The environmental impact of energy use may also change over time due to technological innovation that reduces the emissions of various pollutants or other environmental impacts associated with each energy source. Therefore, despite the strong connections between energy use and economic growth there are several pathways through which the environmental impact of growth can be reduced. Again, however, if there are limits to substitution and technological change then the potential reduction in the environmental intensity of economic production is eventually limited. Finally, reducing energy consumption through lifestyle changes requires a strategy: using pricing and taxation for discouraging the use of energy-intensive devices and encouraging the use of energy-conserving devices. To be successful, the strategies outlined above must harness both appropriate supply and end-use technologies. The strategies must also be converted into policies wielded by policy agents through policy instruments. Complete hardware plus ‘software’—policies, management, financing, training, institutions—solutions are essential for the deployment of energy as an instrument of sustainable development. In the last, we end with the word of caution that the amount of carbon dioxide emission depends on the size of its economy, the level of industrialization and the efficiency of energy use. Even though developing countries contain most of the world's population, their industrial production and energy consumption per capita are relatively low. Hence, until recently there has been little doubt that the primary responsibility for creating the risk of global warming lies with the developed countries.