Human Development and Environmental Sustainability in Oil Exporting Countries

Sustainability consists of fulfilling the needs of current generations without compromising the needs of future generations, while ensuring a balance between economic growth, environmental care and social well-being. Sustainability includes three environmental, economic and social dimensions; whose environmental dimension has a decisive weight in sustainability. Many empirical sustainability-related researches have been carried out in the 2000s and 2010s, and the empirical model used in these studies was based on the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). Also, the two concepts of human development and sustainability have been widely used in development literature in the past years, and humans have been considered as an important factor in the development of different societies in various studies. Composite index of human development includes various dimensions that can affect sustainability and especially environmental sustainability. Also, the influence of large oil revenues in the oil-owning and exporting countries on human development in these countries has played a prominent role, and has categorized the countries into three groups: oil-producing countries with high human development, oil-producing countries with medium human development, and oil-producing countries with low human development. This study has used the panel data method and the Kuznets function in the period of 2010-2019 to investigate the effect of the human development index in 35 major oil exporting countries in the world. According to the result of model estimation by econometric method, environmental sustainability in these countries increases with the increase in the human development index (HDI).