ORIGINAL RESEARCH
The Relationship Between Maritime Container Shipping and Carbon Emissions: A Panel Data Study on Mediterranean Countries
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1
Department of Marine Management, Institute of Marine Sciences and Management, Istanbul University, 34134 Istanbul, Türkiye
 
2
Department of Marine Environment, Institute of Marine Sciences and Management, Istanbul University, 34134 Istanbul, Türkiye
 
 
Submission date: 2024-05-04
 
 
Final revision date: 2024-05-22
 
 
Acceptance date: 2024-05-27
 
 
Online publication date: 2024-09-09
 
 
Publication date: 2025-04-04
 
 
Corresponding author
İrşad Bayirhan   

Department of Marine Environment, Institute of Marine Sciences and Management, Istanbul University, 34134 Istanbul, Türkiye
 
 
Pol. J. Environ. Stud. 2025;34(4):3537-3546
 
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ABSTRACT
The Mediterranean Sea is among the regions that are more severely affected by global warming than other parts of the world. The countries of this region with large economies are parties in many international agreements that fight against Climate Change. One of these efforts is to reduce the impact of consumption-based goods movement, adjusted for international trade on CO2 emissions in terms of reducing greenhouse gases. The aim of this research is to determine whether there is a cointegration relationship between container volume handled and carbon emissions in the Mediterranean Region, which has an important place in the world container trade, and France, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Türkiye, the countries in this region. In addition, according to the AMG test estimation results performed based on the entire panel, it was revealed that there was a negative relationship between container handling volume and carbon emissions at a statistically significant level of 5% (p-value: 0.037<0.05). Therefore, although the container handling volume increases, the carbon emission level decreases contrary to expectations. These results will provide a strong motivation for governments to create the necessary policies to reduce GHG emissions by showing that their economic progress will not be damaged.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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