OECD Environmental Performance Reviews: Turkey 2019
Turkey is the fastest growing OECD economy with rapidly increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Since 2008, its economic growth has been relatively decoupled from air emissions, energy use, waste generation and water consumption. However, the high resource intensity of Turkey’s economy and its heavy reliance on fossil fuels will continue to increase these environmental pressures in absolute terms. More progress is needed in the transition to a low-carbon, circular economy to improve the country’s environmental performance.
This is the third Environmental Performance Review of Turkey. It evaluates progress towards sustainable development and green growth, with special features on climate change and urban wastewater management.
Urban wastewater management
Turkey has achieved progress over the last decade by increasing the share of population connected to sewerage and to wastewater treatment infrastructure. It has also invested significantly in river basin planning. This integrated approach to planning needs to be leveraged to help Turkey achieve its ambitious goals for urban wastewater management in the short to medium term. The chapter describes these achievements and barriers to achieving the urban wastewater management goals, and suggests opportunities for improvement.