Conceptual approach to valuation of climate change in EU countries through the prism of economic activities

Abstract

Today, countries pursue not just to have higher or maintain economic growth, but society faces another challenge – to combat climate change: to have a slower increase in global temperature by decreasing the number of greenhouse gas emissions. Globalization processes have increased greenhouse gas emissions. The problem of climate change has become a widespread problem in all countries, as greenhouse gas emissions produced by any country have an overall impact on the earth's environment. Public administration and public policies face the problem of combating climate change, not constraining the economy too much. The purpose of the paper is to evaluate the extent to which EU countries are affected by climate change according to the economic and social factors of countries that can be seen as drivers of greenhouse gas emissions. The study relates intensity of greenhouse gas emission to the extent to which the country is possible to be exposed to climate change according to its data on industry, energy, waste, and agriculture of EU countries. The TOPSIS method is used to rank EU countries in extent of exposure to climate change. The conceptual approach to ranking climate change through the prism of countries' economic activities is developed. There are some research limitations – statistical data on industry, energy, waste, agriculture are limited in order to fulfil the tasks of the research.