Green economy and employment relationship: An econometric analysis on Türkiye

The green economy is a concept that is becoming more and more popular with the awareness of the change in the ecological balance. This concept is based on reducing ecological scarcity and environmental risks, expanding green employment opportunities, increasing social welfare, and ensuring sustainable development. The main objectives of the transition to a green economic order are the creation of new employment opportunities, reducing carbon dependency and replacing it with clean energy, and reducing poverty within the framework of sustainable development. Türkiye is a country with a high level of green employment potential, particularly in renewable energy. Although a certain part of this potential is being utilized today, it would not be wrong to say that Türkiye still has a long way to go before full utilization. The main objective of this study is to determine the relationship between the green economy and employment in Türkiye. For this purpose, the Toda-Yamamoto causality method is used to determine the relationship between these variables by taking Türkiye's domestic product per capita, carbon emissions, and employment rate data for the years 1990-2020. As a first step in the determination of the causality relationship between these variables, the stationarity test was performed with the Extended Dickey-Fuller and Phillips-Perron unit root tests. In the analysis, the Toda-Yamamoto Causality Test is applied, and it is concluded that there is a unidirectional causality relationship from employment rate to carbon emissions. This result supports the fact that employment growth in developing Türkiye is concentrated in the energy-intensive industrial sector, which causes carbon emissions.