Is carbon emission growth decoupled from economic growth in emerging countries? New insights from labor and investment effects

Abstract

As emerging countries are both major contributors to global carbon emissions growth and global economic growth, the sharp contradiction between economy and carbon emissions has seriously hindered the sustainable development of emerging countries and is not conducive to the realization of global emission reduction targets. This work takes BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the representatives of emerging countries, as an example to investigate the decoupling state between economic growth and carbon emissions, and to uncover the driving factors behind these decoupling. The results show (i) Russia and South Africa have experienced the longest time of strong decoupling, indicating that the decoupling in these two countries is better than that in other countries. China, India and South Africa was characterized by expansive coupling, weak decoupling and expansive negative decoupling, respectively. (ii) The labor effect and investment effect have contributed to the carbon emissions growth in the BRICS, and the reasons for the carbon emissions changes in Russia, India, China and South Africa are strongly consistent, while Brazil has a different performance. (iii) The investment decoupling effect has hindered the decoupling process in Russia, South Africa, China and India, but has promoted the decoupling process in Brazil; while the energy intensity effect is the driving force in the decoupling process in most countries. Finally, the policy recommendations for the different decoupling status of each country were put forward.