 Environmental Justice in India: Incidence of Air Pollution from Coal-Fired Power PlantsJacob Kopas, Erin York, Xiaomeng Jin, S.P. Harish, Ryan Kennedy, Shiran Shen and Johannes Urpelainen Ecological Economics, 2020, vol. 176, issue C Abstract: Air pollution is a vexing problem for emerging countries that strike a delicate balance between environmental protection, health, and energy for growth. We examine these difficulties in a study of disparate levels of exposure to pollution from coal-fired power generation in India, a country with high levels of air pollution and large, marginalized populations. With data on coal plant locations, atmospheric conditions, and census demographics, we estimate exposure to coal plant emissions using models that predict emission transportation. We find that ethnic and poor populations are more likely to be exposed to coal pollution. However, this relationship is sometimes non-linear and follows an inverted u-shape similar to that of an Environmental Kuznets Curve. We theorize that this non-linear relationship is due to the exclusion of marginalized communities from both the negative and positive externalities of industrial development. Keywords: Environmental Justice; Environmental Discrimination; Coal Energy; Air Pollution; India; Environmental Kuznets Curve (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:176:y:2020:i:c:s0921800919304197 DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106711 Access Statistics for this article Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier |
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