Economic Growth Decoupling Municipal Solid Waste Loads in Terms of Environmental Kuznets Curve: Symptom of the Decoupling in India

This paper provides a specific application of the Environmental Kuznets curve is a hypothetical relationship between various indicators of environmental degradation and income per capita. In the early stages of economic growth degradation and pollution increases, but beyond some level of income per capita it tends to reverse, so that at high economic growth leads to environmental improvement. This implies that the environmental impact indicator is an inverted U-shape with income per capita. With respect of the income, hypothetical turning point would eventually occur with the characteristic of Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). India also serves kinds of improvement or opportunities that could be pursued in other developing countries. The main purpose is contributing to enhance the connection decoupling between economic growth and municipal solid waste generation in developing countries such as India, in which relevant data are more readily available. India is an interesting subject of study because of its large territory, rapid economic growth and differentiated regions. In the first phase, this article analyzes the course of GDP per capita with municipal solid waste generation from 1947 to onwards to 2004. In this article in the second phase, regression analysis among the municipal solid waste management factors is conducted on state wide data set in order to find the key stage for efficient environmental improvement. In the final phase, aiming to promote the decoupling between the comparison of environment performance among the state-wide data set.