Drivers of environmental degradation in Turkey: Designing an SDG framework through advanced quantile approaches

Turkey is a laggard in terms of the achievement of its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and one of the primary issues it faces is environmental deterioration. Therefore, a policy-level reorientation may be needed to address this relevant issue. From this standpoint, this research assesses the impact of renewable energy (RE) use and financial development on the emissions of CO₂ as well as the role of urbanization and agriculture, utilizing a dataset stretching between 1985 and 2019. By applying the innovative quantile-on-quantile regression (QQR) and non-parametric Granger causality in quantiles techniques, the study assesses the ways in which the quantiles of the independent variables affect the quantiles of CO₂ emissions. The outcomes from the QQR show that in all quantiles, financial development, economic growth, urbanization, and agriculture impact CO₂ emissions positively, while in the middle quantiles, the influence of renewable energy use on CO₂ is negative. Furthermore, the outcomes from the non-parametric Granger causality test disclosed that in mean and variance, all the variables could predict CO₂ emissions at different quantiles. A complete SDG-oriented policy framework has been proposed based on the research's findings so that Turkey may move toward reaching its SDG 13 and SDG 7 targets.