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Sustainability in The Era of Türkiye

to drip irrigation systems in agriculture, underground dam applications to
prevent evaporation, rainwater harvesting, reuse of treated wastewater, and
grey water applications. In the same way, wastewater treatment activities
have been supported, and 50% support for energy expenditures has been
increased to 100% in order to support the reuse of treated wastewater.

Key Actor in Zero Emission: Sink Areas

In the fight against climate change, the global problem, sink areas such
as forests and seas have an extremely important role by naturally removing
greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere in addition to reducing
emissions and by acting as stabilizing factors, especially in the net zero
emission target.
With the increasing number of treatment technologies and facilities and
the widespread use of landfills and recycling activities in Türkiye, land-based
wastes have been prevented from reaching the seas, and the common use
of services of waste collection from marine vessels at more than 325 points,
which were put into service after 2005, has enabled the protection of the seas,
which is one of our important sink areas. In addition, with the integrated marine
monitoring studies (Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change,
2022) carried out at more than 500 points, Türkiye has become one of the
pioneering countries in Europe and the leading ones in the world, and it has
ranked third in the world (TÜRÇEV (Foundation for Environmental Education),
2022) with 531 blue flag beaches, which are indicators of clean seas. The zero
waste blue movement has been initiated to ensure the continuity of protection
activities, and also important steps have been taken towards carbon neutrality by
declaring the inland sea of Türkiye, the Marmara Sea, as Special Environmental
Protection Area (SEPA) (Presidential Decision on Declaring the Marmara Sea
as SEPA, 2021).
According to the report, “Global Forest Resource Assessment 2020”
(FAO, 2020) published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations, Türkiye ranked first in Europe and 6th in the world in
terms of afforestation activities in the 2010-2020 period. Thus, Türkiye has
strengthened its sincerity and efforts in this respect and has increased the size
of the protected areas 3 times over the last 20 years, accounting for 12% of
the country’s surface area.

Green Transformation Accompanied by Digital Transformation
Looking at world history, we see that technological developments are the
main factor for the transformations in the industry. We are currently going
through a period in which digitalization is developing rapidly. The pandemic,
the effects of which are still ongoing, has also accelerated this transition.

Year 2 / Issue 3 / January 2023 17