This report documents the scale and structure of fossil fuel exploration subsidies in the G20 countries. The evidence points to a publicly financed bailout for carbon-intensive companies, and support for uneconomic investments that could drive the planet far beyond the internationally agreed target of limiting global temperature increases to no more than 2ºC. It finds that, by providing subsidies for fossil fuel exploration, the G20 countries are creating a ‘triple-lose’ scenario. They are directing large volumes of finance into high-carbon assets that cannot be exploited without catastrophic climate effects. They are diverting investment from economic low-carbon alternatives such as solar, wind and hydro-power. And they are undermining the prospects for an ambitious climate deal in 2015.
The analysis in this report focuses on selected production-consumption systems, which link environmental, social and economic systems across the world - generating earnings, supporting ways of living, and meeting consumer demands - and also account for much of humanity's burden on the environment. production and consumption are addressed together because they are highly interdependent. Only by adopting an integrated perspective is it possible to get a full understanding of these systems: the incentives that structure them, the functions they perform, the ways system elements interact, the impacts they generate, and the opportunities to reconfigure them.
The New Zealand Green Growth Research Trust (NZGGRT) commissioned this report to support its thinking on how to grasp important opportunities that would improve the wellbeing of New Zealanders. These are opportunities to enhance New Zealand’s economic prosperity while raising environmental quality that might otherwise be missed through lack of action, leadership or understanding. The report investigates the possible opportunities for New Zealand that could arise from a global shift to green growth, and identifies 21 valuable, feasible actions that New Zealand could take to help realise these opportunities. The report focuses on six important sectors across the trade-focused and the domestic economy. The analysis reveals green growth opportunities in each sector that have both direct environmental benefits as well as important co-benefits such as higher productivity, lower energy bills and fewer health risks.
Green economy has become one of the most fashionable terms in global environmental public policy discussions and forums. Despite this popularity, and its being selected as one of the organizing themes of the United Nations Rio+20 Conference in Brazil, June 2012, its prospects as an effective mobilization tool for global environmental sustainability scholarship and practice remain unclear. A major reason for this is that much like its precursor concepts such as environmental sustainability and sustainable development, green economy is a woolly concept, which lends itself to many interpretations. Hence, rather than resolve long-standing controversies, green economy merely reinvigorates existing debates over the visions, actors and policies best suited to secure a more sustainable future for all. In this review article, the authors aim to fill an important gap in scholarship by suggesting various ways in which green economy may be organized and synthesized as a concept, and especially in terms of its relationship with the idea of social and environmental justice.
Questions of justice in the transition to a green economy have been raised by various social forces. Very few proposals, however, have been as focused and developed as the “just transition” strategy proposed by global labour unions. Yet, labour unions are remarkably absent from discussions of the transition towards a green economy. This is surprising as labour unions are arguably the largest organizations in the world fighting for basic rights and more just social relations. This paper tries to advance the potential contribution of labour unions in this arena by asking: what is the full scope of “just transition” today and how have labour unions developed and refined it over the years to render the move towards a green economy both environmentally and socially sustainable? The concept of just transition is hotly debated within labour unions and has different interpretations, and hence different strategies. The last section assesses these interpretations by means of a normative framework, which seeks to fuse political economy and political ecology. Empirically, the authors add to the growing literature on labour environmentalism, as well as transitions more generally.
This report was prepared for the G20 Development Working Group to inform the creation of a public-private G20 Dialogue Platform on Inclusive Green Investment to scale up commercially viable financial investments. The report provides a stocktaking exercise on existing innovative mechanisms to mobilize private capital for inclusive green growth investments in developing countries, and how to scale them up, including initiatives to engage institutional investors in these investments to identify best practices. The report distills key lessons learned and policy implications as the basis for strategies for attracting investment outside the G20 countries, consistent with making green growth more “inclusive”.
While the term ‘green economy’ has been widely used at the international level, very little information exists about what the concept looks like in practice. It remains to be explored what policies are required, and what the challenges of implementation at national level are.
This book contains case studies from eight small states that have committed publicly to greening their economies: Botswana, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Mauritius, Nauru, Samoa and Seychelles. It provides insights into the success of various initiatives and highlights how small states themselves are making practical progress on a green economy approach.
The State of Green Economy Report 2015 was developed by Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), the Dubai Supreme Council of Energy (DSCE) and the Dubai Carbon Centre of Excellence (Dubai Carbon) in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It was launched under the framework of the World Green Economy Summit. The publication engaged the private sector, as well as the United Nations network.
Six thematic chapters touch on the progress and innovation in green economic development including smart cities and living, clean energy, sustainable lifestyle and consumer choices, responsible tourism, green industries, and environmental finance and investments.
The book includes a survey assessing the performance of the United Nations and its member states in all key areas, laying down a road map for sustainable development in the future. Deploying the Human Green Development Index (HGDI) as a new metric for an era in which human survival is intimately dependent on the viability of the Earth as a clean and sustainable habitat, the report showcases a large array of data, including HGDI indicators for more than 120 nations.