14 - The Role of Environmental Law in Developing Countries

Summary

Perhaps what it most important from this chapter is the conclusion, from empirical data, that economic development is not an adversary of environmental protection, but rather that the two appear to be mutually reinforcing in many cases. Furthermore, there is no fundamental theoretical reason from a Law and Economics perspective that economic growth and environmental protections need be adversarial, especially if the lessons of Pigou, Coase, and Calabresi are well respected along the way.

Since its suggestion in the early 1990’s, Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) supposition holds that beyond an early stage of economic development, that increasing levels of per capita income will be associated with improving environmental qualities or services – that economic development favors environmental protection. There are various assumptions of why this empirical relationship is found; (i) wealthier citizens are better educated and seek better environmental conditions, (ii) wealthier citizens seek to consume higher quality environmental services, (iii) higher level economies shift towards increasingly proportions of service based economies, which are lighter on environmental impacts, or (iv) the Porter Hypothesis, that greener technologies are actually more efficient in a capitalist sense and thus higher per capita income should be associated with greener economies.