Insights Blog

Kurt van Dender, from the OECD's Tax and Environment Unit, OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, discusses ways to transition to much needed carbon neutral growth.

Carlo Carraro, GGKP Advisory Committee Chair, discusses the impact of climate-related disasters in the agricultural industry and the role that insurance systems play.

CDKN attended the Global Green Growth Week, held in Jeju, Republic of Korea, 5-9 September. This is the second of two blogs reporting from the event, by Ari Huhtala, CDKN’s Deputy CEO for Policy and Programmes, and Mairi Dupar, Global Public Affairs Coordinator.

Steven Stone, UNEP, discusses the link between sustainability and financing and the various mechanisms and instruments in place - existing, and to be created - to finance the green economy transition.

The GGKP Knowledge Partner, CDKN attended the Global Green Growth Week was held in Jeju, Republic of Korea, 5-9 September. The is the first of two blogs reporting from the event, by Ari Huhtala, CDKN’s Deputy CEO for Policy and Programmes.

The Global Green Growth Summit, held in Jeju on 8 September and organised by the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) had chosen “Towards a green finance action agenda for 2017” as its topic. The leading question at the outset was “The world is awash with money, but where are the bankable projects for green investments?” 

With the Asia-Pacific region rapidly urbanising and the vast majority of the region facing water scarcity, cities are likely to face water insecurity. To become water secure cities will need to balance rising demand for water with limited supplies.

Yvo de Boer, GGGI, discusses wetland protection in South Africa to scrapping fossil fuel subsidies in Indonesia, the best climate policies are pro-poor.

In December 2015, one of us was in Paris for the first working day after the historic climate change agreements. The Secretary General of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Angel Gurria, had called a group together to “begin the task of changing economies so that they deliver on our climate agreements.” We asked ourselves, “How can we shift economies off their heavy use of the fossil fuels that cause damaging climate change, and encourage economic activities that help us to be resilient to at least a 2-degree temperature rise?”

The last few years have given us some experience to build on. The financial crisis of 2008 saw many governments wondering how to boost faltering economic growth, and to create more jobs. Some countries such as Germany, Denmark, and Korea responded with “green stimulus” packages.

They had noted that there was good business to be done in clean technology production and in installing efficient transport and energy infrastructure. They chose to focus their fiscal stimulation on the new “green goods and services” sector of the economy.

Global Green Growth Institute director-general Yvo de Boer highlights three ways to help countries make the transition to sustainable development and deliver on the Paris Agreement and other global goals.

With the endorsement of a resolution on Sustainable Management of Natural Capital for Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction during the recently held United Nations Environment Assembly in Nairobi, Kenya, a new era of correcting the compass to measure sustainable human well-being has begun.

Conventional income (the market value of output during a fixed period in a given region) has been treated as a proxy for human well-being for too long. The limitations of the system of national accounts – where pollution abatement activities show up as income and biodiversity loss goes unnoticed – are becoming better understood.

From an environmental sustainability perspective, traditional income measurement is defective because it only partially treats natural capital stock in its coverage. While wealth (and natural capital) is a stock, income is a flow (a return on wealth). Understanding this difference is critical. Conventional GDP is adept at measuring flow, but it can only partially measure wealth.