Green Economy in Sustainable Development: An Analysis for OECD Countries

The understanding of the green economy, which is seen as the main strategy of sustainable development, is considered a remedy to eliminate the concerns between environmental concerns and economic goals. Therefore, measuring and considering the performance of countries in the context of the green economy is important in terms of policies to be implemented. The aim of the study is to measure and evaluate the green economy performance of the 20 founding OECD countries. In this context, a green economy index covering the years 2014-2018 was calculated based on the numerical data of 23 variables, which are thought to represent three different dimensions of the green economy. The contributions of these criteria to the green economy were weighted with the SWARA Method, one of the multi-criteria decision techniques. Using the obtained criteria weights, the green economy performance scores of the countries were determined through the TOPSIS Method. According to the scores obtained, it can be stated that the green economy performances of the 20 founding OECD countries increased in the examined period. In this performance increase, positive developments in economic and social indicators have a large share.