FACTORS IMPACT ON POPULATION AND ENVIRONMENT IN BANGLADESH AND INDIA

Abstract

Population growth and trends are centrally important to the environment because it helps to determine the environmental impact of human activities. In this study, the World Bank database has been used. Here, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and energy intensity (EI) are considered as environmental indicators. The population indicators are the proportion of the population aged 15-64 years, and the percentage of the urban population. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is considered a development indicator in a country. This study tries to identify the association between population environment and development. Correlation analysis has been employed to know association and Path analysis is used to determine the important factors for environmental impacts such as carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The result presents that the zero-order correlation exists among energy intensity (EI), the proportion of the population aged 15-64 (P15-64), urbanization (UR), gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (US$), total population (P) ) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emission in Bangladesh and India. It is observed that 8 paths for Bangladesh and 7 paths for India out of each 12 hypothesized paths are found to be statistically significant. In Bangladesh, the total effects of exogenous variables like as energy intensity (X1) and population aged 15-64 (X2) are observed negative direction on carbon dioxide emissions (X6) and the remaining variable like as urbanization (X3) is observed as positive direction on carbon dioxide emissions. However, in India total effects of these two exogenous variables population aged 15-64 (X2) and urbanization (X3) are observed positive direction on carbon dioxide emissions (X6) and the remaining variable like as energy intensity (X1) is observed negative direction on carbon dioxide emissions (X6). The total effects of endogenous variables like as GDP per capita (X4) show a negative direction on carbon dioxide emissions and population (X5) shows a positive direction on carbon dioxide emissions. The study demonstrates that CO2 emission is important for environmental impact in Bangladesh and India. There is a strong association between population, GDP per capita, energy consumption and urbanization and CO2 emission in Bangladesh and India. The factors of CO2 emissions play an important role in environmental degradation. Thus, attention should be focused on using low energy consumption, and proper urbanization, particularly on modern technology which assures fewer uses of CO2 emissions in Bangladesh and India.