Sadia Islam

BRICS countries have experienced rapid economic growth and played a vital role in the world economy because of their capacity to produce large number of manufacturing products, supplies of raw materials, natural resources and the advantage of geographical locations and demographic attributes. Extremely speedy process of industrialization process has been acting as one of the key driving forces for rapid economic growth. According to the IAEA, coal use in India and China will more than double by 2050. To achieve high economic growth, these countries are facing severe environmental problem. India and China were the top two nations with largest total ecological footprints in 2003. Research question of the study is whether relationship between Environmental Performance Index and GDP growth rate in BRICS countries prevails? The study used secondary sources. The study used a sample of five emerging developing countries (BRICS) namely Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. This study examined Environmental Performance Index (EPI) and GDP trends. Based on the collected data covering the period of 2002 to 2016, the analysis indicates that there is a negative relationship between GDP growth rate and Environmental Performance index. However, the study observed that strong correlation between EPI and GDP growth rate except Russia did not prevail. National accounting procedure should include environmental impact which needs to be addressed by the policy makers as suggested by authors.