Revisiting the Environmental Kuznets Curve: The Spatial Interaction between Economy and Territory

A complex interplay of socio-ecological drivers of change exists at the dierent
spatiotemporal scales aecting environmental degradation. This is a key issue worldwide and
needs to be understood to develop ecient management solutions. One of the most applied
theories in the regional analysis is the U-shaped relationship between environmental degradation
and the level of income in a given economic system or Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC).
Specifically, the EKC hypothesis underlines the (potentially positive) role of formal responses to
environmental degradation grounded on government policies that are usually more ambitious in
wealthier economic systems. However, there is a lack of knowledge on the role of space in EKC,
arguing that spatial variability in the environment–income relationship may indicate additional
targets for integrated socio–environmental policies. We hypothesize that a spatially dierentiated
response to environmental degradation could better adapt to dierentiated local contexts. Therefore,
to achieve this goal, we present a multi-scale investigation of degradation processes at the local level,
providing a refined knowledge of the environment–economy linkages considering more traditional,
cross-country and cross-region exercises. Our results demonstrated that—together with temporal,
sectoral, and institutional aspects—space and, consequently, the related analysis’ spatial scales, are
significant dimensions in ecological economics, whose investigation requires improvements in data
collection and dedicated statistical approaches.