How do the anthropogenic factors affect the environment in India? Evidence from the urban provinces

Abstract

The nexus of anthropogenic factors and the environment have been widely studied in the past few decades since the onset of global warming. Corroborating that the environmental changes are the product of various anthropogenic features such as population size, affluence and technological advancements, the Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology (STIRPAT) model was proposed and has been extensively employed to study the impact of technology and socio-economic factors on the environment. This, however, has remained poorly unexplored for India, which has complex and varying demographic properties. Here, through the STIRPAT model, we explore the impact of anthropogenic factors on the outdoor ambient concentration of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide within the industrial and residential clusters of urban provinces of India. Our results show that even though the growing population size has an adverse effect on the environment in every type of setup, technological advancements induces a positive impact on the environment quality. Although we obtain penetrating insights into the nexus of human influence and environment quality, we also recommend improving the quality and land coverage of ambience data collection to obtain deeper insight for an efficient addressal of the current environmental crisis in India.