Relationship between Poverty and Enviornmnetal Degradation in Pakistan

The objective of this research paper is to investigate determinants of poverty and its relationship with environmental degradation in Pakistan. A time series data is taken for the period of 1974 to 2016. Data was collected from the database of World Bank, IMF, State Bank of Pakistan and Economic Survey of Pakistan. CO2 is taken as dependent variable while agriculture growth rate, education and health expenditure as percentage of GDP, household consumption expenditure and inflation rate are taken as independent variables. Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model was used to draw the results. The result shows that Agriculture growth, education expenditure and inflation rate have positive significant relationship with environment while health expenditure and household consumption expenditure have negative significant association. We suggest that government must takes steps to create awareness about environmental issues through media campaign, seminars, etc. and also take policy initiative to reduce poverty level in country.