THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBALIZATION ENVIRONMENTAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC APPROACHES

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1 THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBALIZATION ENVIRONMENTAL AND DEMOGRAPHIC APPROACHES Florian Marcel NUŢĂ Alina Cristina NUŢĂ Carmen Mihaela CREŢU Abstract In the age sustainability there still are countries struggling under the impossibility of offering the people minimum life conditions. The fact, beside the economic and environmental issues, consist in a global matter that should approached carefully and responsible by all governments and international organizations. Moreover solving the demographic issues should not affect the environmental stability and sustainability and the economic development sustaining the welfare should not damage the environmental health. It is a tricky issue levelling all the sustainable development aspects without affecting the source of development for one or another. This is way the developed countries should explain the less developed ones why not opening a new mine or use in excess the fossil fuels for energy needs. The reality is that most of the environmental regulations and policies for example are designed by developed countries that already made all the mistakes they now regulate. The authors aim is to determine the correlations between the environmental and demographical variables in the context of maintaining economic growth. The correlation would determine whether the less developed countries environmental performance paradox affects the economic welfare and life conditions. Keywords: sustainable development, national accounting, environmental, demographic JEL Classification: E01, F64, Q01, Q44, Q56, P25 1. INTRODUCTION Sustainable development values regarding social, economic and environmental welfare are well known for everybody and the equilibrium

2 between those three major aspects is the main issue to be solved when we are talking about development and human evolution. Resources limitation, poverty and ensuring the proper economic growth for sustaining the increasing population worldwide must determine a new approach and new paradigm for human society progress. It is quite a problem to ask from poor countries and less developed communities to stay green and refuse an environmental unfriendly way to achieve economic and social welfare. Yet the environmental performance clean water, clean air, additives free food have direct implication upon the peoples health (Banister, 1998; Shaista, 2010). Why keep forests alive when the land underneath can supply food for growing populations? Why not burn coal and other high pollution fuels for generating energy and supply welfare? Why not promoting high pollution industries in developing countries crippled by high rates of unemployment? These are some examples of questions to ask at for the global decision makers and NGOs promoting the equilibrium between economy, society and environment. Between the population growth and environmental quality many authors described the correlations and issues that occur (Pebley, 1998; Cohen, 1995; Ehrlich, Ehrlich, 1990). It is as simple as in a water tank full of exotic fishes. The more fishes you put in the water tank the dirtier and toxic the water will get. 2. VARIABLES SELECTION SOME EXPLANATIONS We select from the national accounting data the CO2 emissions per capita for describing the environmental quality and the urban population for describing the country demographic evolution. The time series cover the It is a fact proven by environmental quality assessments that the less developed countries has better environmental performance and not necessarily because of their better policies or attention given to the environment, but mainly because they are less industrialized and less urbanized (EPI, 2014). Again these environmental indexes show the fact that when a country begins to be interesting for investments in high pollution industries and became an emerging economy (e.g.: the eastern European economies after the Red Curtain fall). Of course the development of these economies brings contributions in economic growth, social welfare, public health, etc. But is a fact they tend to make the same mistakes regarding the environmental protection like the developed western economies did in the past (Chu&Yu, 2002; Hogan, 1992). Moreover the process of industrialization tends to follow a pattern consecrated in the first years of the industrial revolution. The human communities concentrated in urban areas where the factories and industrial production capacities developed. The fact is demonstrated not only by the urbanization process but also by the highly concentrated urban regions failure to survive the industrial delocalization (the case of Chigaco). Thus the less

3 developed, industrialized, urbanized countries tend to have a better environmental performance (Tabără, Nuţă, 2013). 3. THE MODELING The approach consist in testing the correlation between the environmental quality described by the CO 2 emissions and the level of urbanization described by the number of urban population. To make the assessment possible we initially process the data (series contains data for ). Afterwards we transform the data in stationary series so we can further evaluate their correlation. Then we use the LS estimation method for describing the correlation between the two variables. Table 1: LS estimation CO2 dependent Dependent Variable: DL_CO2 Method: Least Squares Date: 03/08/14 Time: 19:08 Sample (adjusted): Included observations: 51 after adjustments Variable Coefficient Std. Error t-statistic Prob. C DL_URB_POP R-squared Mean dependent var Adjusted R-squared S.D. dependent var S.E. of regression Akaike info criterion Sum squared resid Schwarz criterion Log likelihood Hannan-Quinn criter F-statistic Durbin-Watson stat Prob(F-statistic) (Source: own assessments) As the coefficient shows there is a direct and positive correlation between the two variables. The estimation model obtained is as follows: DL_CO2 = C(1) + C(2)*DL_URB_POP (general equation) DL_CO2 = *DL_URB_POP

4 Figure 1: Gradients graph (Source: own assessments) 4. CONCLUSIONS As it described and assessed the level of urbanization has its impact upon the quality of the environment. Obviously the globalization influences the industrial relocation to emerging economies. As stated before the less developed countries and emerging economies tend to make the same mistakes regarding the environmental protection. Many of these economies develop from rural agriculture oriented or ex-communist ones. In both situations they became destinations for western industries relocation. Many of these industries (e.g.: cement factories) are environmental unfriendly and escape from high regulated areas for more relaxed. Most cases they offer jobs and slight social welfare improvement. They install in poor urban areas (ex-communist countries) or create new urban sites (African and Asian emerging countries). The

5 environmental footmark in both cases is visible and on long term will surely surpass the economic gain. References [1] Banister, J., (1998). Population, Public Health and the Environment in China. The China Quarterly, 156, Special Issue: China s Environment, [2] Chu, C.Y.C., Yu, R.R., (2002). Population Dynamics and the Decline in Biodiversity: A Survey of the Literature, in Population and Environment: Methods of Analysis, Luts, W., Prskawetz, A., and Sanderson, W. C., (eds.), Population and Development Review, Population Council: New York. [3] Cohen, J., E., (1995). Population Growth and Earth's Human Carrying Capacity, Science 269, [4] Ehrlich, P.R., Ehrlich, A.H., (1990). The Population Explosion. New York: Simon and Schuster. [5] Hogan, D.J., (1992). The Impact of Population Growth on the Physical Environment. European Journal of Population. [6] Pebley, A.R., (1998). Demography and the Environment, Demography, Volume as- Number 4, November 1998, [7] Shaista A., (2010). Globalization, Poverty and Environmental Degradation: Sustainable Development in Pakistan, Journal of Sustainable Development Vol. 3, No. 3, [8] Tabără, N., Nuţă, F., Nuţă, A., (2013). A review of the actual state of environmental performance of Romania EPI Journal of Public Administration, Finance and Law, Issue 4/2013,