The second half of 2015 yielded two critical global agreements relevant to green growth that will shape the work of governments and global institutions in the coming years, if not decades. The first was the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which commit countries to specific goals and targets for achieving the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development. The second was the Paris Agreement on climate change, which includes specific national commitments for tackling climate change and keeping global warming below dangerous levels.
As governments and organisations turn their attention from the negotiated text to on-the-ground implementation and action, the Green Growth Knowledge Platform’s (GGKP) objectives of encouraging widespread collaboration, addressing knowledge and data gaps, and supporting practitioners and policymakers with the latest analysis and data, are more relevant and necessary than ever.
In particular, the GGKP’s effort over the past two years to establish itself as a global leader in green growth knowledge generation, management, and sharing allows us to provide immediate support to our partners and countries.
The GGKP recently released its Annual Report covering the two-year period, 2014-2015, during which the GGKP initiative witnessed a number of important milestones and tremendous growth. The most significant of these milestones are detailed below.
The first was the launch of the GGKP web platform with the explicit objective of significantly improving access to green growth knowledge for practitioners and policymakers. This effort has been focused on better understanding this community, their knowledge needs, and the best way to connect them to the information and data they require. With this objective in mind, we distributed surveys to thousands of potential users, conducted in-person interviews, and consulted knowledge management experts from our partners and other organisations. The effort has paid off. In 2014, the GGKP web platform received close to 70,000 visits, more than triple the number of visits to the GGKP’s first website. Growth has continued with web visits in 2015 surpassing 90,000 and we are on track for more than 100,000 visitors in 2016.
The information and data provided on the web platform has also expanded considerably over this period. At its launch, the GGKP resource library contained 600 studies and by the end of the 2015 this grew to over 1200. We have also greatly expanded the data available on the platform to now include 20 datasets for 193 countries going back more than 50 years.
The GGKP web platform draws together over 2,000 knowledge products (publications, courses, project descriptions, etc.) from more than 300 leading organisations, making it the largest existing source of green growth knowledge.
The second milestone was the launch of the GGKP research committees, including on trade and competitiveness, technology and innovation, indicators and metrics, and fiscal instruments. Although relatively new, the committees have already yielded tangible results. For instance, the trade and competitiveness research committee launched a working paper that identified a major gap in data related to environmental policies in developing countries. The committee is now launching work to catalyse a global research agenda for addressing this gap. Building on the success of the GGKP research committee model, an additional three committees were launched in 2015 on the topics of inclusiveness, behavioural insights, and law. There are now over 100 experts from 34 of the GGKP Knowledge Partner institutions participating on these committees.
Photo: Members of the Behavioural Insights Research Committee
The third milestone was the convening of the GGKP Annual Conference in early 2015 in Venice, Italy. The Conference was the largest GGKP conference to date and featured presentations on 53 policy relevant papers and drew together close to 250 experts who engaged in two days of lively discussion and debate on the role of fiscal policies in the green economy transition.
Our fourth major milestone was the expansion of the GGKP’s knowledge sharing activities. In 2014 we experienced 200% growth in our social media followers, and a further 60% growth in 2015. The GGKP Insights blog has now received contributions from 124 experts across the growing green growth community of practice. In the same year, we launched a webinar series that featured six webinars drawing together a total of 620 participants.
Our final milestone was the launch of the GGKP office in Geneva, Switzerland in January 2014. Although small, the GGKP now has a core, dedicated staff, which serves as the institutional backbone for the global partnership.
The Annual Report provides further details on these major milestones and our other activities during 2014-2015.
I invite you to look over the report, share your feedback, and actively engage with this growing green growth community and partnership.