A New Insight of the Existence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve in Indonesia

Natural resources play as vital inputs for economic activities, mainly in developing countries. However, massive use of natural resources puts more pressure on the environment and as the result, the quality of environment is deteriorating. The body of economic literature have shown that income is associated with harm to the natural environment. The relationship between income and degradation of the environment is known as the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. Previous studies of EKC hypothesis in Indonesia are still limited and the results are inconclusive due to different results. Therefore, the aim of this study is to present a new insight of the existence of EKC in Indonesia using different method. Most of previous studies of EKC in Indonesia employ Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method, while this study uses data panel regression method from 33 provinces in Indonesia during 2012 to 2018. The result confirms the existence of EKC hypothesis in Indonesia. This study also estimates the turning point, a level of income that starts give positive impact on the environment. This result gives new insight to the existing literature. The policy implication for policymakers are straightforward, i.e. improve wealth of the society through higher income for the protection of the environment