The principles of sustainable development play an integral role in making development assistance work at the level of policies, plans and programmes. In response to the Paris Declaration call to "… develop and apply common approaches for ‘Strategic Environmental Assessment’ at sector and national levels" among donors and partners, the Guidance on Applying Strategic Environmental Assessment was endorsed in 2006 by members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee, representatives of developing countries receiving aid, the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Environment Programme, the World Bank and many other agencies. Since then, a growing number of countries at all levels of development have legislation or regulations prescribing the application of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and many more are introducing it as part of their policy tools. This is creating unique opportunities for better policy making and planning by incorporating environmental considerations into high-level decision-making and opening new mechanisms to build consensus on development priorities within governments themselves and between governments and societies.
This paper evaluates the emerging green economy in South Africa, using ideas from the concept of sustainable rural livelihoods, which are intimately connected to ecological services many developing countries. It finds that African communities and governments are prioritising green economy for job creation, poverty alleviation and reducing inequalities, while addressing global environmental concerns. What remains problematic, however, is how these objectives are to be achieved. The paper argues that one of the key challenges in South Africa is the gap between policy and implementation of sustainable development, the Millennium Development Goals and other globally driven initiatives. The paper emphasises that green economy policy needs to consider poverty reduction and women’s empowerment in order to promote rural sustainable development.
This summary was prepared by Eldis.
This paper provides a review of literature on energy-efficient sustainable refurbishment in developing countries. To this end, it provides an overview of climate change and its impact on the built and natural environment within the context of sustainable development. In particular, it will show the impact of human activity, focusing on the role of buildings, on Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions, and consequent greenhouse effects. The paper will consider the main elements of sustainable development and refurbishment in the context of developing countries, with special attention to conditions for attaining social sustainability and the role of employment therein. It will also examine the role of construction in development, with a particular focus on its contribution to pro-poor employment generation and social development objectives while meeting CO2 mitigation targets. The paper concentrates on case studies within Brazil, South Africa and the Netherlands to examine the social, economic and environmental effects of adopting sustainable refurbishment.
The publication is a result of the February 2013 workshop organised by the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) partners LIFE and GENANET, together with the German Ministry of Environment, in Berlin. The aim of the workshop was to discuss how women’s unpaid work and care economy can be incorporated into sustainable development to achieve gender justice. Different voices and perspectives, from scholars and activists from the global North and South, discussed the growing concern about the emergent terminology of “green economy” in development agendas that ignore its social and environment dimensions.
Long-term projections suggest that without policy changes, the continuation of business-as-usual economic growth and development will have serious impacts on natural resources and the ecosystem services on which human well-being depends. This highlights the necessity for both developed and developing countries to move to a new growth path that is consistent with the protection of the environment and a sustainable use of scarce natural resources, while still achieving sizeable gains in living standards and reducing poverty...