Businesses and government leaders from around the world are increasingly sounding the alarm about the need for effective management of business dependencies and impacts on ecosystems. Though various frameworks and standards have been developed and implemented to improve extra-financial accountability to stakeholders, current sustainability reporting falls short in providing the information needed for accurate investment decision-making. The recent releases of Integrated Reporting (IR) guidelines have been presented as a significant step in the right direction by professionals and academics.
Anthropogenic climate change is a formidable global challenge. Yet countries’ contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions and the climate change impacts they face are poles apart. These differences, as well as countries’ different capacities and development levels, have been internationally acknowledged by including the notion of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) and Respective Capabilities under the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Green industrial policy (GIP) is the pursuit by governments of national economic excellence in key green economy sectors, with a view to creating globally competitive domestic firms. It differs in only a few respects from traditional industrial policy, most significantly with respect to the potential global environmental benefit that comes from private sector innovation and competition in these sectors.
GIP is increasingly used by governments in the developed and developing countries, a trend that is likely to be reinforced in coming years by the desire to capture the environmental and economic benefits of green economy sectors. However, as with traditional industrial policy, it is easy to implement policies that undermine rather than support the intended goals.
This report debates the extent to which public-private partnerships (PPPs) are delivering value for money (VFM) in India. While VfM is traditionally interpreted to mean the lowest-priced alternative at the time of commissioning, in the context of sustainable development it is understood as value for money across the asset life cycle. This approach embodies the principles of “total cost of ownership” and “whole-life value”—accounting for the costs of planning, designing, building, operating and maintaining an asset. It can therefore be used to account for the medium- and long-term efficiency gains and cost reductions enabled by sustainable infrastructure.
The report's findings indicate that despite the best-in-class laws, policies, formal processes and institutional frameworks, PPPs in India might not be delivering VfM across asset life cycles. The report make policy recommendations on how to improve the existing safeguards, on how to move beyond the existing safeguards, and on leveraging existing infrastructure development funds so as to lower the cost of capital for sustainable infrastructure.
The phrase “Green Economy” was first mentioned in ‘Green Economy Blue Book’ by the British economist Pierre published in 1989. Green Economy promotes economic growth, instead of blocking it in the name of protecting the environment. It advocates changing extensive economic growth with the features of big investment, huge consumption, and serious pollution into intensive economic growth with the features of high efficiency, less resource-consuming, and less waste discharging and calls for harmony between economic and social growth and the proper load that nature can bear. As a new economic model aiming at harmonious development of economy and environment, Green Economy can fully satisfy the requirements of the scientific outlook on development of harmony and people first with energy saving and environmental protection as its goal.
Green economy/green growth is a new terminology for what has been known for 40 years as ecological modernisation, however with its focus on efficiency and innovation it cannot guarantee to fulfil the Brundtland sustainability criteria. A factor analysis based on the I ¼ P*A*T formula demonstrates how optimistic the assumptions regarding future technologies must be to support the green growth concept. Consequently, the authors pledge for a pragmatic, risk avoiding approach by slimming the physical size of the economy. This requires ‘strong sustainable consumption’ (including production as resource consumption), which in turn requires a change of the societies’ institutional settings (formal and informal, mechanisms and orientations). Finally some elements of a strategy towards this end are pointed out, with special emphasis on the role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Through networking and advocacy they can both stimulate bottom-up action and mobilise the pressure necessary for the institutional changes which are needed to mainstream strong sustainable consumption.