The ‘attitude–behaviour gap’ or ‘values–action gap’ is where 30% of consumers report that they are very concerned about environmental issues but they are struggling to translate this into purchases. For example, the market share for ethical foods remains at 5 per cent of sales. This paper investigates the purchasing process for green consumers in relation to consumer technology products in the UK. Data were collected from 81 self-declared green consumers through in depth interviews on recent purchases of technology products. A green consumer purchasing model and success criteria for closing the gap between green consumers' values and their behaviour are developed. The paper concludes that incentives and single issue labels (like the current energy rating label) would help consumers concentrate their limited efforts. More fundamentally, ‘being green’ needs time and space in people's lives that is not available in increasingly busy lifestyles. Implications for policy and business are proposed.
With rapid urbanization and industrialization, China is now facing a great challenge in meeting the soaring demand for new buildings and the corresponding energy consumption. Under such circumstances, the setting of a national standard on green buildings would be an effective way to respond. In fact, China has made significant progress in developing national green building standards. But such progress is not explicitly released to the international societies. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to introduce such progress. China's green building efforts are first discussed in detail with the various provisions of the national indicator system. By conducting a comparison with other countries' green building standards, a critical analysis of such a national standard is presented. The comparison indicates benefits to be gained and challenges to be met, such as lack of indicators on responding climate change, lack of region-specific indicators, lack of quantitative indicators, higher costs for receiving certification and lack of applying innovative green technologies. So, substantive revision is critically needed.
Greening of product chains has come up as an important means to systematically improve the environmental performance of products from cradle to cradle in Europe and elsewhere. Some experience with inter-firm co-operation aiming at reducing the environmental impacts has been generated in recent years. Most of these experiences involve cooperation between some of the links in product chains, very often stopping at European borders. Problems of market communication, information availability and information costs prevent companies from going beyond these lines. Also, anonymous markets may prevent communication between producers and end-users in the West and supplying firms in developing countries. Only very few documented case studies of global greening of product chains are available. Therefore, the challenge here is how to establish interactions with the first links in supply chains. Within the context of South Africa it is of cardinal importance to identify these links to ensure sustainable synergy. European countries are constantly changing the standards of products in order to meet environmental targets.
Studying the roles of governments in adopting green innovations is significant for analysing the transition to a more sustainable energy system. This article presents a comparative study of policies for popularizing domestic solar water heaters in three countries: China, Israel and Australia. Expanding the analysis beyond the economics of innovation, it demonstrates the institutional dimension of green technology deployment in these three countries. By examining the diverging roles of governments in facilitating green technology adoption in existing social routines and practices, it finds that governments' motivations, support and implementation mechanisms are remarkably different in these three countries. In particular, the paper argues that solar water heater popularization has been distinguished as a business opportunity in China, energy security in Israel and environmental responsibility in Australia. In addition, the institutional settings have a real impact on governments' roles in adopting green innovations, in terms of the policy instruments chosen and implementation mechanisms.
Economic incentives such as environmental taxes can create attractive markets for environmentally sound products and process technologies. Many European countries have a long tradition with environmental taxes but recent figures indicate that the share of green tax revenues in the EU-15 GDP is slightly declining. This is surprising since several governments had declared they would gradually shift the fiscal burden from labour to pollution. This paper tries to explain the fiscal inertia by analysing the role of the taxation base, fiscal neutrality, government failure with respect to the use of economic instruments and the dependence of government budgets on consumption-driven economic growth. The paper concludes that the initial focus on the double dividend hypothesis has strongly limited the impact of green taxes. A green tax reform based on consumption taxes that are differentiated according to the environmental impact of products could be more effective and efficient.
If economic arguments could make such a strong case for early action and policy change to address the threats of climate change, then could the same be possible for biodiversity loss? The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) has been exploring this question since the initiative was launched by Germany and the European Commission in 2007. Half a decade later this publication based on a chapter included in the book “Nature in the Balance: The Economics of Biodiversity” (eds. Dieter Helm and Cameron Hepburn), describes the life of TEEB to date, progress made towards its goal of mainstreaming the economics of nature, the main challenges as the initiative begins a phase of implementation, as well as the responses of the TEEB community.
This report presents a comprehensive overview of the various green economy knowledge products developed and implemented by the UN system. Prepared as a response to the 18th meeting of the Environment Management Group (EMG) senior officials, the report compiles and analyses the results of the EMG’s Issue Management Group on Green Economy stocktaking exercise on existing UN system-wide web-based green economy platforms and resources.
The report compiles toolkits, best practices, lessons learned and analytical and assessment methodologies that support the acquisition of green economy knowledge and capacity building. The publication’s objective is threefold:
This paper presents a new research agenda on climate change and green growth from the perspective of the division of labor in classical economics. The paper covers three major dimensions of green growth (i.e. carbon emissions, environmental protection and material resources use) and some related important topics, as well as the fresh policy implications of the new research agenda. Typical marginal analysis in a given structure of the division of labor suggests that “green” action is a burden to economic development. Therefore, climate negotiation has become a burden-sharing game and has reached a stalemate. New thinking is badly needed to rescue these negotiations and to drive a shift to a new “green growth” paradigm. The proposed new research agenda represents an effort to create a new narrative on climate change and green growth. Because the new research agenda can theoretically predict the possibility that a more competitive structure of the division of labor could be triggered by “green” policy, it has promising policy implications for various important challenges facing us in the 21st century.
Since economic reforms began in 1978, China's urban population has increased by half a billion. Over the next 20 years, cities will likely add another 300 million people through local population growth, migration and the integration of nearby rural areas. Cities account for the majority of resource use and pollution so achieving greener growth will depend on developing and implementing a more sustainable urbanization model. China's leaders have responded to these challenges with ambitious goals and comprehensive environmental laws and regulations. These have so far not significantly reduced the harm from air, water and soil pollution: in large measure because China's green governance does not match its green ambitions. Drawing on the World Bank's work on green growth and a recent joint urbanization study by the Development Research Center of China's State Council and the World Bank, this paper reviews recent academic research on green governance in urban China and discusses its main implications in the context of emerging global green growth concepts.
The paper appears in the Special Issue: Climate Change and Green Growth: New Thinking.