Revisiting the Environmental Kuznets Curve: The Spatial Interaction between Economy and Territory Enrico Maria Mosconi, Andrea Colantoni, Filippo Gambella, Eva Cudlinová, Luca Salvati,* and Jesús Rodrigo-Comino 1 Department of Economics, Engeneering, Society and Business, University of Tuscia, Via del Paradiso 47, I-01100 Viterbo, Italy; enrico.mosconi@unitus.it 2 Department of Agricultural and Forest Science, University of Tuscia, Via S. Camillo de Lellis snc, I-01100 Viterbo, Italy; colantoni@unitus.it 3 Department of Agricultural Science, University of Sassari, Viale Italia 39, I-07100 Sassari, Italy; gambella@uniss.it 4 Department of Regional Management, Faculty of Economics, University of South Bohemia in Cˇ eské Budˇejovice, 13 CZ-37005 Studentská, Czech Republic; evacu@centrum.cz 5 Department of Economics and Law, University of Macerata, Via Armaroli 43, I-62100 Macerata, Italy 6 Physical Geography, Trier University, 54286 Trier, Germany; jesus.rodrigo@uv.es 7 Soil Erosion and Degradation Research Group, Department of Geography, University of Valencia, 46010 Valencia, Spain * Correspondence: luca.salvati@unimc.it; Tel.: +39-380-72-89-966

A complex interplay of socio-ecological drivers of change exists at the dierent spatiotemporal scales aecting environmental degradation. This is a key issue worldwide and needs to be understood to develop ecient management solutions. One of the most applied theories in the regional analysis is the U-shaped relationship between environmental degradation and the level of income in a given economic system or Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). Specifically, the EKC hypothesis underlines the (potentially positive) role of formal responses to environmental degradation grounded on government policies that are usually more ambitious in wealthier economic systems. However, there is a lack of knowledge on the role of space in EKC, arguing that spatial variability in the environment–income relationship may indicate additional targets for integrated socio–environmental policies. We hypothesize that a spatially dierentiated response to environmental degradation could better adapt to dierentiated local contexts. Therefore, to achieve this goal, we present a multi-scale investigation of degradation processes at the local level, providing a refined knowledge of the environment–economy linkages considering more traditional, cross-country and cross-region exercises. Our results demonstrated that—together with temporal, sectoral, and institutional aspects—space and, consequently, the related analysis’ spatial scales, are significant dimensions in ecological economics, whose investigation requires improvements in data collection and dedicated statistical approaches.