Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have experienced dramatic economic growth in the past decade, with six of the ten fastest growing economies in the world found in SSA between 2000 and 2010. Economic growth is critical to continued development and poverty reduction, but can have, as has already become visible in the region, significant environmental costs and can even hinder further long term economic growth and development, if environmentally unsustainable growth paths are continued. However greener growth is needed to allow SSA countries to continue to develop, while avoiding or reducing negative environmental impacts.
The 2011 Green Growth Strategy provided initial guidance to governments on how to achieve economic growth and development, while preventing costly environmental damage and inefficient resource use. What progress have countries made in aligning economic and environmental priorities since 2011? This report attempts to evaluate this progress and highlight where there is broad scope to heighten the ambition and effectiveness of green growth policy. It draws lessons from green growth mainstreaming across the OECD’s work programme, notably in terms of how governments can maximise institutional settings to seize economic opportunities surrounding the transition to a green economy, and considers ways to enrich the Green Growth Strategy based on work undertaken since its launch.
Today’s financial system is in many ways too large, too complex, and too removed from the real economy. It has become focused on short--‐term profit maximisation, it does not pay enough attention to social and environmental risks, and it leaves 2.5 billion people without access to adequate or any financial services. Banks play an important role in the economy intermediating between savers and borrowers. As such the role banks can play in contributing to or undermining sustainable development is profound. Values based banking is purposively oriented towards the development of a sustainable economy.
This report serves as a starting point to address the calls from Rio+20 and the United Nations Environment Programme Governing Council to share the South’s various experiences and national-level initiatives for transitioning to sustainable and socially inclusive economies. Four unique national initiatives – all taking place in countries in the South, and at different stages of implementation - are highlighted: Ecological Civilization in China, Sufficiency Economy in Thailand, Green Economy in South Africa, and Living Well in Bolivia.
By emphasizing their common economic, environmental and social aspirations, as well as challenges and available resources, this report aims to benefit countries by sharing experiences that they may find relevant to their own particular challenges. In addition to providing concrete examples, such exchanges can empower countries to share and learn from home-grown responses to sustainable development challenges. In this report, sub-sections describing four national sustainable development approaches are drawn from contributions from the four project countries themselves.
Agriculture and the agro-processing sector in Brazil have shown impressive growth over the past two decades. This has largely been driven by productivity improvements and structural adjustment resulting from broad economic reforms, as well as new technologies developed by agricultural science. Government policy and industry initiatives are increasingly focused on the sustainability of agricultural development.
The aim of this report is to assess how deforestation affects the economy of the United Republic of Tanzania, both by looking at the limited ecosystem goods and services currently reflected in GDP and by looking at the effects on the economy if the full suite of forest ecosystem services are taken into account.