Municipal Solid Waste and Development:The Environmental Kuznets Curve Evidence for Mediterranean Countries

The application of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) to Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) in Mediterranean countries is particularly challenging given the sensitivity of these economies to a lot of environmental constraints due to socio-economic factors such as population growth, urbanization, tourism and economic development. We aim to fill the lack of literature for these countries by testing the EKC for 19 Mediterranean countries over the period 1990-2010 and to identify the main determinants of MSW through a panel data model. Several original control variables are included, such as socio-economic factors, working women, education, technology and climate. Another original aspect of our research is the management of the missing data through the imputation method developed by Honaker and King (2010). Results show that the EKC hypothesis only holds for developed countries with very high turning points. The main policy implication for Mediterranean countries is that in the short or medium run, policy makers cannot use growth and development policies as a means of reducing MSW. This problem is even more acute because the model shows that some economic and socio-demographic factors will go on to have a detrimental impact on pollution by increasing MSW. These factors are the rise in the working women ratio, the rise in urbanization, the increase in the share of industry in Mediterranean economies (displacement effect) and the role of international trade (detrimental technological and scale effect). Consequently, policy makers should urgently implement ambitious public policies that are dedicated to the reduction of MSW in these countries.