Environmental Efficiency and Its Relationship with Income in Islamic Countries (D8)

Economic growth is the main goal of many economic policies of governments. However, rapid economic growth often causes serious damage to the environment (due to the increasing use of natural resources). Hence, there is a potential contradiction between economic growth policies and the state of the environment, so gradually the issue of conflict between economic growth and environmental quality became one of the topics of discussion in the field of environmental economics.

In the field of environmental economics in this study, using data envelopment analysis method (DEA) the environmental efficiency was calculated for developing Islamic countries (D8) during the period of 1980-2014. Then, using the panel data method, the relationship between environmental efficiency and per capita income was investigated. Information about these countries was collected from various economic sites such as the Data world bank, Economy watch and ….

The results show that the average of environmental efficiency of the D8 countries increased at a rate of 1.02. This increases the efficiency of technology to increase efficiency at the rate of 1.021 and 0.998 of technical efficiency. Technical efficiency is because of the increase in management efficiency (1) and scale efficiency (0.998).

 The growth of environmental efficiency in Iran is 1.016, which is in the fifth place after Malaysia (1.053), Indonesia (1.042), Nigeria (1.036) and Turkey (1.025). According to the results, there is a direct relationship between per capita income and environmental pollution, so Kuznets law is not established in these countries.