The Relationship Between Maritime ContainerShipping and Carbon Emissions: A PanelData Study on Mediterranean Countries

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 CO 2 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 Trkiye, 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.