The Role of a Knowledge-Based Economy in Maintaining and Improving the Quality of the Environment

Extended Abstract
Introduction and

Achieving high economic growth is one of the development goals in countries that have a direct relationship with the quality of the environment, because the increase in economic growth has led to an increase in agricultural and industrial activities and has caused an increase in environmental pollutants and more use of scarce natural resources, both of which will mean reducing the quality of the environment. But the path of a knowledge-based economy is a path that pursues both economic development and does not have the plagues of ordinary industrial development. Therefore, paying attention to the knowledge-based economy can be important in the path of sustainable development.

Considering the importance of the knowledge-based economy on the level of pollution, the present research examines the four knowledge-based economic indicators introduced by the World Bank, including economics; innovation; technology and education deals with the emission of three important pollutants, CO2, CH4 and N2O. To achieve this goal, 8 Islamic developing countries (D8) were used for the period 2000 to 2019, which were estimated with the help of Dynamic Ordinary Least Squares (DOLS) to investigate the effect of sub-indices on the amount of pollution, artificial neural networks were used. It has been used to Iran.

The results of the DOLS model showed that in all three pollution diffusion models, the information technology and the innovation indexs had a negative and significant effect on pollution diffusion and the education index had a significant positive effect. The results of the neural networks for Iran indicated that there had been a negative effect on the amount of pollution in all three sub-indicators of economic and innovation pollution.

The results showed that among the four indicators, the innovation index had a greater elasticity on the spread of pollution than other indicators. Therefore, it is suggested to invest more in the use of innovations in Iran and other D8 member countries. Also, according to the results of neural networks in Iran, it is suggested to move with more attention and more correct management in controlling corruption and the quality of regulations, as well as increasethe country's economic growth in the direction of reducing pollution.