LAUSR

Abstract: The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesizes an inverted U-shaped relationship between indicators of environmental quality and economic growth. The possible existence of an EKC has in the past been tested using relatively short time series of data and presumed indicators of environmental quality that can be considered sub-optimal. This paper addresses these shortcomings in investigating the extent to which economic growth and environmental quality in Singapore, the most economically developed country in Southeast Asia (SEA), accord with an EKC. A heavy metal (chromium, Cr) is here used as an indicator of environmental quality. This is because levels of a heavy metal with well-known risks to health are likely to have a much stronger relationship with perceptions of local environmental quality than, for example, CO2 emissions, and therefore likely to elicit a more rapid response from legislators. A national emission inventory (NEI) analysis quantified atmospheric Cr emissions from 1900 to 2017. Levels of Cr emissions increased rapidly during the 1960s–1980s, a period characterized by industrialization in Singapore that commenced around the time of its independence, returning to negligible levels by the 1990s as the country entered the current period of de-industrialization and economic modernization. Results of the NEI for the period post-1950, when an unbroken time series of reliable and annually comparable economic data first become available, were further subjected to econometric analysis, which confirmed the EKC hypothesis with regard to Cr emissions in Singapore. Results also suggest that the post-industrial development of Singapore may have contributed to creating pollution havens in the region. Together the findings have important implications for regional sustainable development and the governance of pollution emissions, including those that potentially have transboundary effects, more generally.