Mitigation pathways toward sustainable development: Is there any trade-off between environmental regulation and carbon emissions reduction?

The income and pollution relationship is widely debated in the literature, but income alone cannot control emissions, and that requires environmental regulation measures. Even though weak environmental regulations may offset market failures caused by negative externality of pollution, investigation of their role in the control of environmental pollution is of prime importance. To better understand the role of environmental regulations in carbon emissions mitigation, this study takes a step to offers a new perspective on the role of environmental regulations in pollution reduction for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. To this end, the study employs panel data econometric tools for data spanning from 1995 to 2016. Besides, the study conducts fully modified ordinary least squares estimator to get country-wise results. Empirical results confirm the positive role of environmental regulations in carbon emission mitigation, and the current environmental control measures are successful in achieving pollution reduction targets in the sample countries. Environmental regulations help in establishing the inverted U-shaped relationship between income and pollution. Climate change mitigation in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries is not associated with economic development only but driven by effective environmental regulations as well.