The Main Macroeconomic Determinants of Environmental Degradation in the Independent Turkic Republics and Türkiye: Panel Data Analysis

Abstract

Precautions to prevent environmental degradation, which is important for the continuation of life, are among the most important issues to which all countries attach importance. For a sustainable environment, it is necessary to make both globally common and individual policy arrangements appropriate to the capabilities of each country. In the applied literature, there are very few studies on the main macroeconomic factors affecting environmental degradation in the independent Turkic Republics and Türkiye which have an ecological deficit despite their underground and aboveground natural resources. For this reason, panel data analyses were conducted for the independent Turkic Republics of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Türkiye using annual data for the period 1996-2018, depending on data availability. In the analysis, ecological footprint, which represents environmental degradation, is considered as a dependent variable; GDP per capita, economic complexity index, non-renewable and renewable energy consumption, and trade openness are considered as independent variables. The results of the analyses show that the most important determinants of environmental footprint are GDP per capita, non-renewable energy consumption, and economic complexity index.