Exploring Environmental Kuznets Curves of Kitakyushu: 50-Year Time-Series Data of the OECD SDGs Pilot City

Abstract

Can green growth policies help protect the environment while keeping the industry growing and infrastructure expanding? The City of Kitakyushu, Japan, has actively implemented eco-friendly policies since 1967 and recently inspired the pursuit of sustainable development around the world, especially in the Global South region. However, empirical studies on the effects of green growth policies are still lacking. This study explores the relationship between road infrastructure development and average industrial firm size with air pollution in the city through the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) and Non-linear Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) methods were applied on nearly 50-years' time series data, from 1967 to 2015. The results show that the shape of the EKC of industrial growth, measured by average firm size, depends on the type of air pollution: inverted N-shaped relationships with NO 2 and CO, and the U-shaped relationships with falling dust particle and O x. Regarding infrastructure development, on the one hand, our analysis shows a positive effect of road construction on alleviating the amount of falling dust and CO concentration. On the other hand, the emissions of NO 2 and O x are shown to rise when plotted against road construction. The 1 This is the working draft of an accepted manuscript with Palgrave Communications (Nature Research). For proper referencing, please use the following suggested citation: