Measuring Green Growth
Green growth is an imperative for meeting the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Yet many key stakeholders remain to be convinced. How can we persuade policymakers of the urgency of pursuing economic growth that is environmentally sustainable and socially equitable?
This was the question at stake in an expert meeting sponsored by the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) and the Green Growth Knowledge Platform (GGKP) from June 7-8 in Geneva – the outcome of which is described in more detail below.
Part of the problem lies in the numbers. As we approach three decades since the Rio Earth Summit, much progress has been made in measuring the transition to green growth. The OECD has published and improved its dashboard of green growth indicators as well as inclusive growth indicators. The World Bank has made various databases for tracking green growth openly available. UN Environment has embarked on a green economy modelling program.
Yet significant gaps remain. In 2016, the GGKP Metrics and Indicators Working Group published a report, “Measuring Inclusive Green Growth at the Country Level”, identifying five major areas for improvement. These included (i) natural assets underpinning economic activities, (ii) natural resource efficiency and absolute decoupling from economic growth, (iii) socioeconomic resilience to ecological risks, (iv) economic opportunities and efforts related to environmental policies, and (v) inclusiveness of environmental policies in line with the conceptual framework for green growth introduced by the GGKP report “Moving towards a Common Approach on Green Growth Indicators” in 2013.
Since then, the GGKP group has taken forward a work program attempting to identify and improve indicators around economic opportunities from green growth. Clearly showing how policies for inclusive green growth can benefit an economy in terms of employment, trade, investment and innovation will speak not only to ministries of environment, but to others as well, many of which hold significant purse strings.
Meanwhile, GGGI, a GGKP founding partner, has sought to address these gaps directly. Through its Green Growth Index, GGGI is putting together a rich set of indicators and matching datasets that concretely measure green growth performance at the country level. GGGI plans to use a Simulation Tool that accompanies the Index to enhance the organization’s work on the ground in some 30 countries worldwide, offering policymakers, particularly in developing countries, with direct guideposts for achieving green growth objectives.
GGGI is not alone in this effort. Other organizations have stepped forward to fill this urgent need. UN Environment, also a founding partner of GGKP, has produced the Green Economy Progress Index, while others like the OECD have proposed an environmentally adjusted multifactor productivity measure as part of its dashboard of green growth indicators. While each approach has its advantages and disadvantages, they complement each other in their attempt to capture the multi-dimensionality of inclusive green growth metrics, and add to a growing measurement toolbox that countries can use efficiently.
Details of the expert meeting
It is vital that GGGI, UN Environment, and other organizations supporting green growth, many of which make up the over 60-strong GGKP partnership, continue to collaborate and improve their measurement frameworks and policy-planning tools.
In this collaborative spirit, on 7-8 June 2018, GGGI sponsored an expert meeting entitled “Measuring Green Growth Opportunities and Country Performance” at the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Geneva is the home of the GGKP Secretariat as well as UN Environment’s Green Economy Initiative.
The two-day workshop offered the opportunity for experts to critically review and improve the GGGI Green Growth Index and Simulation Tool and to explore new metrics for measuring economic opportunities. UN Environment’s Green Economy Progress Index team played a strong role in comparing, contrasting, and sharing experiences, helping to ensure the complementarity of both tools.
The GGKP co-organized the event, ensuring the creation of a neutral, inter-institutional space for achieving collective action on metrics and green growth. The meeting was well-attended by representatives of GGGI, UN Environment, and other GGKP working group members from the OECD, ILO, World Bank, UNIDO and other leading international organizations and academic institutions.
As next steps, the GGGI will continue to improve the Green Growth Index and Simulation Tool building on expert input from UN Environment and other GGKP partners. Following on the GGKP reports from 2013 and 2016, the GGKP working group will finalise a scoping study on indicators for measuring green growth opportunities for discussion at the Sixth GGKP Annual Conference (#GGKP6) taking place at the OECD in Paris in November 2018.
Photo coverage of the workshop is available here.