Core to the GGKP is the assumption that in order to mobilise the transition to a green economy, policy makers and practitioners will need to have access to the best knowledge and data that leading institutions and experts have to offer. Knowledge enables action, allowing countries to implement the appropriate environmental, economic and social policies to meet their specific development needs.
The GGKP is working to address two important challenges related to knowledge. The first is ensuring that the research needed to actually support policy change is being generated. Are researchers focusing on the right questions? For instance, are we collecting the right data necessary to measure our progress in implementing inclusive green growth? Do we know how to make effective use of green fiscal instruments to drive forward the critical changes needed in our consumption and production patterns? The GGKP, with the help of leading experts from across its Knowledge Partners, has been working to fill these knowledge gaps through a collaborative research process. You can learn more on these efforts here.
The second challenge, and the one where the GGKP has invested considerable attention, is ensuring that practitioners, policymakers, and other experts have unparalleled opportunities to access, share and utilize the latest green growth policy analysis and research. Numerous governments, international organisations, think tanks and academic institutions are actively producing research to support the uptake of green growth policies – the scope and depth of this new knowledge is staggering. But how many of us can keep up-to-date on what is being produced?
To better understand our users needs, the GGKP has been surveying participants at events and through telephone interviews and the results always point to the same challenges: users don’t know where to access information or, when they do, they are often overwhelmed by the amount of information. Too much information can be just as detrimental as not enough information, especially if it prevents users from identifying the knowledge most relevant to them.
In an attempt to highlight the important research out there, the GGKP manages a Resource Library - identifying relevant research, drawing it together into one space and providing tools for users to search and filter the content to easily narrow down and access the publications most relevant to them.
Did you know for instance that the GGKP’s four founding organisations – GGGI, OECD, UNEP and the World Bank – have produced a combined total of over 400 green growth publications? Are you aware that the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa has produced 7 studies on inclusive green growth in the last year alone? Or that the International Monetary Fund is a leading contributor of research on green fiscal policy and subsidy reform?
The GGKP Resource Library currently draws together the largest collection of green growth reports, articles, books and other publications produced by leading institutions and experts. When launched in January 2014, the Resource Library contained a total of 600 studies; today, it includes over 1200.
While drawing together such a large database has the advantage of ensuring we are capturing all relevant research being produced, it also comes with its own challenges. For instance, how can we ensure users are able to sort through all this information to find what’s most relevant to them? Our solution to this has been to embrace technology and tag content as much (and as accurately) as possible. Each publication added to our library is tagged by relevant sectors, themes, countries and regions. In addition, working with REEEP, we have implemented the Climate Tagger tool to add an additional degree of refinement. All of these tags combined allow users to filter the GGKP Resource Library content based on their particular areas of interest.
In an attempt to further improve the user experience, we recently added new functionality to the Resource Library, allowing users to filter resources by organisation. This new function allows users to further refine their search results, focusing on the output of a particular organisation of interest. For instance, the filter allows you to quickly identify what research the World Bank has produced on energy, or GGGI’s research on India.
Moreover, this function also sheds light on the bigger picture, namely who are the thought leaders in this area, and who exactly are we referring to when we talk about the broader green growth community of practice? Today the GGKP draws together 45 knowledge partner organisations, but would you have guessed that there are over 300 organisations reflected in the Resource Library? This means there are over 300 organisations focusing their efforts and producing research on green growth and green economy topics.
The transition to a green economy is a complex undertaking, involving almost all sectors of the economy, and relying on a range of policy instruments. There are a number of organisations that have been focused on this important policy challenge since the lead up to Rio+20, but since then, the range of institutions tackling these issues are grown dramatically. For instance, the New Climate Economy is active in research on the economic benefits and costs of acting on climate change; the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) has emerged as a thought leader on topics of climate compatible development and the Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System has been building up the evidence base around the links between green growth and the finance sector.
This new functionality of allowing users to filter publications by organisation was implemented in response to feedback received from users. In winter 2015, the GGKP surveyed web users to better understand their experience with the GGKP web platform. The ability to track who is doing what in the field of green growth was one request received. Similar requests have been received directly from the GGKP’s Knowledge Partners.
As our understanding of green growth progresses and our information needs evolve, the GGKP will continue to refine the tools it provides to improve the way in which we connect users to green growth knowledge. For now, I encourage you to explore our Resource Library, and see for yourself the amazing body of green growth research available.