Carbon dioxide emissions, GDP per capita, industrialization and population: an evidence from Rwanda

The study makes an attempt to investigate the causal nexus between carbon dioxide emissions, GDP per capita, industrialization and population with an evidence from Rwanda by employing a time series data spanning from 1965 to 2011 using the autoregressive distributed lag model. Evidence from the study shows that carbon dioxide emissions, GDP per capita, industrialization and population are co-integrated and have a long-run equilibrium relationship. Evidence from the Granger-causality shows a unidirectional causality running from industrialization to GDP per capita, population to carbon dioxide emissions, population to GDP per capita and population to industrialization. Evidence from the long-run elasticities has policy implications for Rwanda; a 1% increase in GDP per capita will decrease carbon dioxide emissions by 1.45%, while a 1% increase in industrialization will increase carbon dioxide emissions by 1.64% in the long-run. Increasing economic growth in Rwanda will therefore reduce environmental pollution in the long-run which appears to support the validity of the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. However, industrialization leads to more emissions of carbon dioxide, which reduces environment, health and air quality. It is noteworthy that the Rwandan Government promotes sustainable industrialization, which improves the use of clean and environmentally sound raw materials, industrial process and technologies.