Auteur: Siriki COULIBALY
Résumé:
WAMU (West African Monetary Union) established in 1963 becomes WAEMU (West African Economic and Monetary Union) since 1994 with the aim of coordinating the member countries’ actions in all the economy sectors. The environment attracts attention today and the search for well-being, required reconciling economic growth and better environment quality. In the WAEMU economic dynamics, we wonder if it can be extended to an economic, monetary and environmental Union. A crucial step in this is to know whether the member countries have the same relationship between growth and pollution. The reference in this field is the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). It describes an inverted U-shaped relationship between growth and pollution. With annual data from 1970 to 2010 on CO2 emissions per capita and GDP per capita , we estimated the cubic form of the EKC model proposed by Grossman and Krueger (1991 ) as part of a panel and then by country. Energy consumption, the economic growth rate, the industry share in GDP and population density, were used as control variables. A strong assumption of the EKC theory is the supposed lack feedback of pollution on GDP. By releasing this hypothesis and taking into account the endogeneity problem, the estimation results by the instrumental variables method show that there are two groups of countries in the WAEMU area. A group for which the GDP – CO2 relationship is neutral consists of relatively low-income countries: Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Togo. In other countries, the EKC is satisfied, but the turning points determined are inaccessible. We conclude in this case that these countries are on the ascending part of the Environmental Kuznets Curve. The GDP – CO2 relationship is positive. Ultimately, it appears that the CO2 – GDP relationship is not uniform in the WAEMU area.
