Green Economy: Bibliometric Analysis Approach

With the increased efforts and focus on sustainable development and changes in the climate, literature has given more attention to the green economy. However, researchers have not yet been totally able to consensus on the definition of this phenomenon. The study presented in the paper provides an overview of the advancements present in research on the green economy for the period from 1990 to 2020. Using a bibliometric analysis approach, the paper summarizes the trends of development and the status quo of the green economy. The aim is to provide the reader with guidance and a solid conceptual framework for future research.


INTRODUCTION
The financial sector can play a crucial role in building a stable and prosperous economy by implementing the principle of responsibility and accountability. This requires redirecting investments towards economic activities, which balance economic, environmental and social objectives, in order to enhance living standards and reduce the effect of global challenges, such as a change in the climate, decreasing levels of biodiversity, inequality, etc. In this sense, many analysts take a closer look at the "green economy," which can improve the growth of a country's economy and achieve goals of sustainability simultaneously.
The green economy concept has become a significant field in the specific development policies of countries worldwide (Bogovic and Grdic, 2020). It was first proposed by the British environmentalist Pearce in the book Blueprint for a Green Economy. He believed that a green economy is a form of economic development instead of the traditional pursuit of economic growth. It emphasizes the organic combination of social development and ecological environment protection (Pearce et al., 1989). Since then, the concept has continued to expand. The United Nations Environment Programme describes the green economy as a form of economy that advances and improves social equity and human welfare while simultaneously reducing the risks of adversely affecting the environment and shortages in the ecological system. Several significant challenges arose due to the incorporation and implementation of the classical economic theory. According to Shmelev (2017), there is a need for a revolutionary system such as the green economy to replace the capitalistic economy to support more economic growth through innovations. The green economy is based on fostering entrepreneurship, establishing balance in multiple sectors and encouraging sustainable development.
According to Bergius et al. (2020), the insufficient availability of natural resources and the significant increase of environmental damages are gaining attention as substantial challenges facing the universe in the current era. Due to these factors, conflict arises due to the steadily increasing growth of the population. Therefore, the green economy needs to be developed, which is a new path that promotes environmentally sustainable investment. Researchers have found that the current boom era effect on industrial structures is among the determinants of degradation (Mealy and Teytelboym, This Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License 2020). If incorporated and implemented in the international states, the green economy environmental policies will offer guidance to industries in utilizing economically friendly practices and maintaining competitiveness.
Local community development and improving people's living standards are the main aspects considered in the green economy (Vasile et al., 2013). Studies have shown that holistic approaches in development policies are vital for the success of the green economy (Jones et al., 2016). Implementation of the green economy is dependent on the local communities, research institutions, the government and industries. Zhou and Deng (2019) provide a deeper explanation of the green economy, stating that its prime goals are to address economic disparities in an entire region and establish environmentally friendly societies. Such economic efficiency is made possible through the implementation of welltargeted policies focused on the environment. The results attained from the policies benefit policymakers in promoting low-carbon developments and establishing green areas. Therefore, this paper is particularly interested in gaining a more profound understanding of the implementation of environmental policies that play a significant role in establishing the green economy.
In the last decade, academics have accorded more attention to the green economy. For example,  developed a conceptual framework that demonstrates the ability of the green its approaches, tools, and economic concepts that will lead to the transition of a country's economy towards more sustainability. The green economy interventions significantly impact indicators of various sectors and investments in ecosystem services and low carbon development in South Africa . In addition,  there lies a connection between South Africa's informal economy and the green economy. Therefore, providing the argument that by inluding informal economy in green economy discussions, the environmental planning and policy formulation becomes more informed, resulting in environmental developments that are more sustainable and socially equitable (Mark and Vandenbergh, 2012).
Further research on the green economy in South Africa focused on assessing women's opportunities in environmental sectors and green economy development (Nhamo and Mukonza, 2020). The researchers observed it is essential for policymakers to raise awareness in women of the interventions and opportunities to enhance their capacity at the conceptualization stage of the project and managerial levels. Mukonza (2020) and Wenjia C, et al., (2011) found that influential factors in South Africa green entrepreneurship activities include access to information, knowledge funding, competence, support from the private sector support and government are also critical in order to sustain entrepreneurship in a green economy. Studies have looked into the issues arising from the transition into a green economy in Ghana in previous years. The problems recognized from the studies include incorporating green building technologies and implementing green information technologies (Leonard et al., 2021;Mastini et al., 2021;Mahmood et al., 2020, Darko et al., 2018, Ahenkan et al., 2018Dovie, 2017;Bai et al., 2018; Al-Omoush, K.S., et al., 2020). This paper aims at contributing the existing literature by addressing the questions; • In the Scopus database, what is the historical trend of scientific products and the numbers of green economy researches? • How is the trend of scientific production of green economy researchers in terms of subjects/fields? • What are the critical intellectual and influential aspects of green economy literature? • What is the future research direction of the green financial economy?
The findings of this paper could provide some future study directions for the interested authors. Moreover, the following table represents the literature reviews of the green economy. In addition Table 1 summarized some of the Literature Reviews of the Green Economy. Figure 1 shows the importance of green economy policies as reflected in the various discussions by researchers and scientists.
This paper started by providing a summary of literature from recent publications, intending to prove a broader picture of relevant research conducted in this field. The following parts are Section 2, that is an overview of the research database and methodology, including the data collection strategies used and filtered data. Section 3 provides further discussions. Section 4 includes the conclusion of the paper and the future directions.

METHODOLOGY AND PROCEDURES
A bibliometric analysis approach has been used in this paper. Pritchard (1969) was among the first researchers to utilize it. The approach has acquired more recognition as an effective tool to conduct a quantitative analysis to gain a deeper understanding of the literature.
Since articles from the Scopus database are more reputable, it was utilized as a source for analyzing publications focused on the Green economy. Since the first article based on the green economy is the Journal of Development Economics in 1990, the bibliometric analysis will utilize publications from 1990 to 2020. All journal publications from 1990 to 2020 are exported in comma-separated values (CSV) and plain text format, containing keywords, citations, Identification of essential parts of the scientific publications was done through clustering techniques. For data analysis, the software VOS viewer and Excel software were used in the study.
VOS viewer software facilitates bibliometric analysis by creating co-occurrences maps, co-authorship and co-citation. Other features such as searching, magnification, and navigating found in the software made it a necessary tool in the study (Van Eck et al., 2010). Figure 2 summarizes the applied methodology in this paper.

KEY RESULTS
The bibliometric analysis addresses the following questions: The papers are published from which journals? Which are the countries of origin for these authors? Which are the fundamental interests and words from each study? How are the papers cited in the literature? Sustainable consumption within a sustainable economybeyond green growth and green economies

Journal of Cleaner Production
The authors advocate for an approach that evades risks by the economy in terms of its physical size. To achieve this, there's a need for robust, sustainable consumption that depends on transforming the settings of social institutions  Green economy and related concepts: An overview

Journal of Cleaner Production
The article defines identified diverse concepts, tools, approaches, and theories related to a "green economy". In addition, it recognizes the need to develop a framework portraying the capacity of the green economy to foster the transition of a country towards a green economy Bina, 2013 The Green Economy and Sustainable Development: An Uneasy Balance?
Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space The article provides the three discourse categories that can effectively describe and show the effects of greening. These categorize are demonstrated as "all change," "greening," and: "almost business as usual" Gasparatos, 2017 Renewable energy and biodiversity: Implications for transitioning to a Green Economy

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews
The study indicates that the logic of renewable energy expansion has socio-economic and environmental benefits that should be considered when developing renewable energy policies Zeb et al., 2015 Causal links between renewable energy, environmental degradation and economic growth in selected SAARC countries: Progress towards a green economy

Renewable Energy
The results show that there is bidirectional Granger causality between depletion of natural resources and carbon dioxide emissions in Nepal and between poverty and energy production in Pakistan Cohen, 2012 The potential role of carbon labelling in a green economy

Energy Economics
International, multi-stakeholder organizations play a significant role in establishing protocols and standards. Authors argue that it is vital we consider the entire life circle of a product being labelled. It is also essential to set an international standard for reporting and measurement Pan, 2018 Advances and challenges in sustainable tourism toward a green economy

Science of The Total Environment
This paper provides a more profound understanding of matters on sustainable tourism. It encourages various disciplines and researchers to explore inter-relationships among energy/water/ food more broadly, environment/ecology and community/ culture Kothari et al., 2014 Alternatives to sustainable development and the Green Economy

Development
The article argues that the "Green Economy" is not enough to respond to the inequity and unsustainability of "development" (a western cultural construct). The authors propose optional socio-environmental futures to (and not of) development Wanner, 2015 The New 'Passive Revolution' of the Green Economy and Growth Discourse: Maintaining the 'Sustainable Development of Neoliberal Capitalism

New Political Economy
The authors argue that the green economy can be perceived as a Gramscian 'passive revolution' whereby the dominant discourse on sustainable development, subsumed by capitalist hegemony, is secured in global developmental, economic, environmental, and growth crises Barbier, 2011 The policy challenges for green economy and sustainable economic development

Natural resources forum
The authors argue that the growth of the green economy does not ensure sustainable economic development due to the losses and degradation evident in the global ecosystem. The article explores and advocates for the implementation of a range of financing mechanisms Table 2 provides listed journals based on the numbers of publications according to the numbers of publications in the study sample. It is evident that the most influential journals that publish works related to the paper's study are journals labeled "ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE."

Distribution of Journals
Five key journals appearing in this list published many publications in a green economy and other fields: IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science with 27 magazines, Sustainability (Switzerland) with 25 publications and International Journal of Green Economics with 14 publications.
Notably, the green economy gained recognition from finance journals, regardless of its broadly acknowledged significance and the urgency for regulatory tools and relevant policies. More research is needed to bring the green economy to the attention of mainstream sources of financial and economic analysis to fill the vacuum in the existing literature.
The findings of this study recognize that various reasons support the paper's claims of the need for more research. First, investments in green projects have increased at substantial levels in recent years and have maintained a robust momentum. For example, the reported 2017 record of 155.5 billion dollars in global green bond issuance caught the interests of various academics.
In addition, more academic researchers from diverse disciplines are interested in this area. Though currently, limited publications are produced, several finance journals and events in the leading stream economy and previous years will link to significant outputs (e.g. 2018 RFS Climate Finance Initiative in London3). The inadequacy of relevant research means that there is potential for new considerable research in the green economy. The paper aims at showing that there exists more opportunity.

Country of Origin of the Authors
It is important to investigate the regions which research on the green economy originates. The study links this idea to the countries of the authors' origin. Figure 3 provides information on the countries from which the authors originate. The information shows that recent progress in research on the green economy is mainly from the United States, China, the United States, the United Kingdom and other developed countries. The dominant researchers in this field are based in China, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Influential international organizations such as the UN and the World Bank base their headquarters in one of these countries to encourage and facilitate research.
Among the significant emerging contributors are Saudi Arabia, Ireland, Iran, and other emerging economies. Based on the sizes of these countries, it is necessary to hold active debates discussing green economy topics. There lies uneven distribution between the developing and developed countries in terms of the origin of the authors, which means developed countries dominate the field of the green economy.
The study acknowledged the fact that developed countries have dominated academic research on the green economy. Also, the statistics are unlikely to change for a significant amount of time. Therefore, green economy issues in countries that are developing ought to be considered as areas of focus in future research.    Figure 4 is a graphical illustration of the keywords that are evident in the used articles. Combining the top ten list of keywords globally and the visual data shows patterns that catch the reader's attention.

Analysis of Keywords
In addition, keywords are seen to have gained more attention. Economic Growth is ranked the 10 th ; this indicates the importance of a green economy in managing Economic Growth.
The keyword climate change which is evident in Figure 4, relates to a green economy, showing that climate change is of significant significance to the topic of the green economy. Researchers also have paid interest in the effect of the green economy on the growth of development and sustainability. The following is represent table 4 to show the top-cited articles in the green economy field.  An analysis of the keywords is essential and is used to provide clarification of green economy conceptual points. The green economy is linked to changes in climate and ought to be driven by policies. The topics of investments or financial issues are the critical topics of interest. The green economy receives attention from various economists such as financial economists.

Analysis of the Citations
The papers utilized in the literature were cited correctly. The citations for the sample of the 862 publications are 9 814 in number. We take a deeper look into the cited sources cited by these papers. As shown in Figure 5, Ecological Economics, Resources Policy and Omega journals dominate the citations. It is evident from the study that finance journals are not primarily used. An analysis of the used journals shows the literature is comprehensive. Although this area is labeled a green economy, the studies are not mainly founded on prominent stream finance journals. This shows the unavailability of models and techniques in mainstream finance research to gain a more profound understanding of issues relating to a green economy.

CONCLUSION
The study used the bibliometric approach to provide an analysis of the ongoing trends and status of the development of the green economy. Using a rank analysis and illustration of critical factors of the publications, we identified vital data that assisted in  forming an accurate subject matter description. After analyzing the keywords in green economy literature, it shows it is important to consider the green economy as an interdisciplinary research phenomenon that covers policies and investments in climate adaption and financing. An analysis of the authors' country of origin shows that developed countries dominate most research on the green economy.
The green economy is seen as an essential topic that is gaining more recognition in the academic sphere. Recent literature shows an increased focus on the green economy, but less interest is paid from finance journals and mainstream economics. This creates a vacuum that allows researchers to look into the following direction in their research: 1. Since the green economy is a topic based on the economy, this creates a need to look into economic issues using financial techniques and finance perspectives. Also, topics such as green governance, green bonds and management of green risk ought to be in mainstream finance journals 2. More research on issues of the green economy from the green economy perspective in development would be beneficial to policymakers and regulators for purposes of developing welldefined objectives for the policies and aligning their goals.