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SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL KUZNETS CURVE IN GCC COUNTRIES

EXTENDED ABSTRACT Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was formed by Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman in 1981. The council represents one of the wealthiest country-group in the world. The value of both per capita income and per capita CO2 are higher than the value of most countries in the world. Having such higher indicators lead us to question the validity of Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKG) between the development and environmental degradation of the countries. According to EKG there is an inverted U-shape relationship between per capita income and per capita pollutant emissions. This implies that after a certain point, the growth in economy may be profitable for environmental quality. The main objective of this research is to analyze the validity of EKG in GCC countries. Per Capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was taken as indicator for economic development and CO2 per capita was taken as main pollutant for environmental pollution. The data covers 1980 2010 period. Per capita CO2 was taken as dependent variable and regressed on the income per capita and square of income per capita. As a result of having contemporaneous correlations between the errors terms of equations, instead of ordinary least squares estimation technique, seemingly unrelated regression model (SUR) was utilized in the analysis. According to the results, there was an EKG relationship between CO2 emission per capita and GDP per capita in UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. There was a U-shaped relationship in Qatar and Kuwait. As for Oman; there was no a significant relationship between per capita income and environmental degradation.