The link between urbanization and air pollution in Turkey: evidence from dynamic autoregressive distributed lag simulations

This study investigates the relationship between urbanization and air pollution in Turkey. Dynamic ARDL method was used for the period 1960-2015. According to the findings, there is a positive and statistically significant relationship between long-term urbanization and CO2. If urbanization increased by 1%, carbon emissions increased by 0.02%. There is a similar relationship between the shocks that will occur in population growth and CO2 emission in the long term. However, there is a negative and statistically insignificant relationship between the two variables. In the relationship between GDP and CO2, there is a positive relationship in the long term. GDP increase of 1% increases CO2 emissions by 0.11%. There is a similar relationship between long-term GDP shocks and CO2 emissions. According to short-term analysis results, energy consumption increases CO2 emissions by the same rate as GDP. However, the astonishing result of the study emerges here. Empirical results show that a long-term positive shock in energy consumption reduces CO2 emissions and a negative shock increases pollution. According to these results, Turkey has not reached the point of sustainable growth. For this reason, this developing country needs to make regulatory implementations and determine future policies for these impacts affecting air pollution.

Automated summary

The study explores the correlation between urbanization and air pollution in Turkey, finding a significant positive relationship between long-term urbanization and CO2 emissions. It also shows that GDP has a positive long-term association with CO2 emissions, pointing towards the need for regulatory measures for sustainable growth in the country.