each other and couldn’ t be separated. This part will define the main issues in Turkey and how they affect the three pillars of sustainability. Moreover, the impact of each issue on the social sustainability will be addressed.
GHG Emissions and Climate Change Turkey considered one the countries that have a rapid increase in urbanization, economy and population. The population in 1990 was approximately 56.47 million, it increased to reach 73.72 million in 2010 and it expected to reach 85.41 million in 2050. Increasing the population led to increase the urban areas which lead to increase the economic rate. Thus, industrialization has an impact in increasing the economy in Turkey( PMR 2013). It has been noticed that increasing in the economy leads to increase the GHG emissions in the same time.
As shown in Figure 1, the GHG emissions in 1990 reached approximately 187 million tons tCO 2
e and it increased 114.90 % in 2010( TurkStat 2012). Thus, it shows that the GHG emissions do not have a significant increase in 2008 and 2009 because of the economic crisis. While in the other years it has a steady increase.
Figure 1: GHG emissions in Turkey between 1990 and 2010( TurkStat 2012)
The main problem of increasing the GHG emissions especially CO 2 is refers to burning fossil fuels.
High level of CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere is lead for the climate change in Turkey. Most of the energy that used in Turkey is supplied by imports, so it considered high energy importing country( Kaygusuz 2003). Turkey is an energy intensive country when it’ s compared with the developed countries. After the studies that conducted by Turkish Statistical Institute in 2012, it shows that GHG emissions mostly came from energy and industrial sectors as shown in Figure 2. In 2010, the energy sector recorded the highest GHG emissions sector which reached 70.9 % of the total GHG emissions while the industrial sector took the second place. Energy sector could include residential, manufacturing, electricity generation and transportation.
Air Pollution The most critical issue and threaten the human health in Turkey is air pollution. A rapid economic growth, population growth and energy consumption in Turkey lead to increase the air pollution. When comparing Turkey’ s carbon emissions per capita to EU advanced countries, it seems that Turkey has the highest( Bilen et al. 2008). Man-made activities and natural sources emit dangerous pollutants to the air. These activities can include; burning fossil fuels to produce electricity
Turkey’ s environmental issues and challenges toward sustainability 125