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.
This article examines the potential contribution of household scale off-grid renewable energy generation to the post-carbon economy. The large-scale focus of the green jobs agenda in high-income countries obscures how small-scale technologies can be a transformative source of employment in developing economies. Debates about what constitutes a green job and their value leaves out the everyday practice of green livelihoods carried out by the urban poor across the African continent in unfavourable institutional contexts where nonrenewable fuel is subsidised and renewable energy inputs are heavily taxed. The article presents experiences from field work in several countries, including Egypt, Nigeria and Kenya to provide practical examples of communities pursuing strategies of income generation, community empowerment and environmental preservation. It argues that scholars and practitioners concerned with both social justice and environmental preservation should embrace a definition of green jobs that is bottom-up or people-centred.
Global interest in the ‘green economy’ has heightened since 2008, and this article contributes to these discussions by elaborating on (a) four alternative, and sometimes competing, discourses of the green economy, and (b) the particular politics of the green economy in South Africa. Most research on the green economy tends to focus on European and North American countries, however in the context of a changing global economy and the ‘rise of the South’ the politics of the green economy in countries like South Africa is of increasing importance. South Africa faces many challenges in pursuing a transition to a more sustainable development path, yet has been cited as a global green economy leader. This article argues that this is related to the particular discourse of ‘green growth’ which is dominant in South Africa, and proposes two significant lines of critique of this discourse. The first cautions that commitment to the green economy may not be particularly deep-rooted, sustained or coherent; and the second highlights some of the more troubling political implications of the type of green growth advocated, even if it were to be pursued with more determination.
Readiness is a concept interchanged with preparedness and, many assume, adequate knowledge. Simple as it may be, readiness denotes a complex interaction of parameters and conditionalities required for an uptake of a phenomenon – in the context of this article, green economy transition. Following deliberations to and from Rio + 20, there is no doubt the world is set to undertake green economy as a means to attaining sustainable development, poverty eradication, job creation and equity evermore. At the heart of the green economy is the need to address negative impacts associated with one of the key global challenges of our epoch, climate change. The question this article seeks to address is: To what extent is South Africa green economy ready? Focusing on the national sphere of government, the article concludes that this country has moved swiftly in addressing key readiness parameters, including high-level commitment and stakeholder buy-in, enhancing institutional set-up, developing the necessary legislation, establishing funding mechanisms and having programmes running on the ground.
Africa is well endowed with potential for hydro and solar power, but its other endowments – shortages of capital, skills, and governance capacity – make most of the green options relatively expensive, while its abundance of hydro-carbons makes fossil fuels relatively cheap. Current power shortages make expansion of power capacity a priority. Africa's endowments, and the consequent scarcities and relative prices, are not immutable and can be changed to bring opportunity costs in Africa closer to those in the rest of the world. The international community can support by increasing Africa's supply of the scarce factors of capital, skills, and governance.
This article appeared in the Energy Economics Supplemental Issue: Green Perspectives.