environmental Kuznets curve

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

a hypothesised relationship between economic development and environmental quality in which environmental degradation increases in the early stages of economic growth, reaches a peak, and then declines as rising incomes generate both the demand and the resources for environmental protection; named by analogy with Simon Kuznets's income inequality curve, the environmental Kuznets curve has been documented for some local pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and particulates but is not consistently observed for global problems such as carbon dioxide emissions or biodiversity loss; critics argue that the curve reflects regulatory choices rather than automatic economic processes, and that relying on growth to eventually fix environmental problems is a dangerous gamble given the scale of current ecological crises