The year 2020 is a year unlike any other, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to severely hit countries, resulting in more than 70 million infected people globally, a million deaths, millions of unemployed people, and trillions of dollars pulled-out for emergency stimulus packages to rescue the economies. The full impact of the pandemic is still expanding and governments are under immense pressure not only to invest in COVID-19 recovery packages while facing budget shortfalls, rising debt, and declining tax revenues, but also to “green” these investments.
These recovery plans need to be aligned with the SDGs to build social and economic resilience to not only future pandemics but also persistent global environmental challenges. In this context, a policy assessment tool such as the Green Growth Index becomes even more relevant. The multidimensionality of the Green Growth Index allows its application to assess impacts of policy decisions and actions related to COVID-19 recovery plans on various environmental, economic, and social sustainability indicators.
Significant improvements were made in the 2020 edition of the Green Growth Index to make it even more relevant to not only track changes on green growth performance but also assess the impacts of green recovery packages. First, more SDG indicators with sufficient data are included in the Green Growth Index. Second, the trend from 2005 to 2019 is calculated so that, over time, the Index can show the impacts of the green policies and investments on a country’s green growth performance. Third, the Simulation Tool for the Green Growth Index has been completed and is ready to be rolled out for country application in 2021.