Over the past 20 years, two major challenges have dominated international debate on sustainable development: the imperative of environmental protection and the eradication of all dimensions of poverty. Economic growth lies at the heart of both these issues. It is required to reduce poverty but, at the same time, needs to be decoupled from natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions in order to preserve the livelihoods of current and future generations. Several concepts aim to reconcile this dilemma and offer much to delineate green and inclusive growth, many important aspects remain vague. However, it is important to facilitate a systematic assessment of interactions (i.e., synergies and trade-offs) between the green and inclusive dimensions of growth as it is a central concern of policymakers.
This discussion paper combines the concepts of green and inclusive growth and proposes a checklist for assessing the impact of green growth policies on social inclusiveness, including short case studies for green microfinance (Bangladesh), carbon taxes (South Africa) and waste management (Brazil). The checklist shall enable policy makers to define synergies and trade-offs between green growth and inclusiveness. In this way, it seeks to address the concerns of many developing-country governments that green growth policies may have negative social impacts.