The report aims to examining and documenting the role and significance of various enabling measures that could facilitate a smooth transition to an inclusive green economy in Africa, taking into account the implications of such a transition for the region. The measures examined are: policies and institutions, policy instruments, technology development and transfer, capacity development, and financing the transition.
The report (i) Analyses the implications of the transition to an inclusive green economy for Africa; (ii) Explores measures as they relate to the transition, and analyses trends in the application of the measures; (iii) Discusses challenges and opportunities for an inclusive green economy transition in Africa; and (iv) Puts forward policy recommendations that could enhance the adoption of enabling measures relevant for a smooth transition in Africa.
History is replete with evidence that innovation can improve our lives in some circumstances and devastate them in others. The irony of our times is that as our economies become more and more service driven, we are producing, transporting, and consuming more resource- and energy-intensive material goods than ever before in ever more innovative ways. And herein lies the motivation for policy. Innovation can increase welfare, but only within socio-political environments that can respond creatively to its dual nature. Innovating is usually very hard to do, but sustaining human welfare through innovation is always even harder. Thus, for policy makers, the point is not just to increase the incidence of innovation but also to use it to leverage positive social outcomes. I propose that deploying innovation as a strategy for mitigating threats to the environment will demand that we get to grips with it from this perspective. Democracy is a public conversation about innovation, and in the Canadian case, achieving sustainability goals will be impossible unless public institutions are rehabilitated as agents of innovation.
This paper discusses the need for a Canadian clean innovation policy agenda to focus on organizational and institutional innovations within the public sector. The paper provides an introduction to innovation policy and how innovation can be directed to promote environmental sustainability. It then discusses the pitfalls that can lead to government failure in attempts to promote technological change. It then lists key institutional design principles to produce effective public-sector organizations capable of fruitfully engaging with the private sector to promote sustainability while avoiding the pitfalls discussed earlier. The article concludes by calling for further case-study research on how good institutional designs are achieved and what institutional designs best fit the Canadian context.
The paper explains the findings of the MC3 Project (Meeting the Climate Change Challenge). This project brought together over 100 researchers, practitioners, civil-society leaders, and policy-makers, led by researchers from Royal Roads University, Simon Fraser University, and the University of British Columbia, with 12 major research partners from the public and private sectors, including the Union of British Columbia municipalities. Researchers conducted a detailed evaluation of 11 leading, yet different, municipalities across the province to identify the leading innovators and innovations on climate action. The case studies revealed the following key drivers of innovation, in order of prominence: the legislative and policy framework, supported by provincially led incentives and tools, access to partnership funding and intermediary support, and framing the issue as critically important.
The paper begins with some basic innovation definitions and quickly reviews evidence of the relatively weak innovation performance of Canadian business. The core of the paper develops a thesis that explains why Canadian industry, on the whole, has not emphasized innovation in its business strategies but has prospered nonetheless. This raises the question of whether Canada's low-innovation equilibrium can persist in the face of tectonic forces related to globalization, technology, and sustainability that require innovative responses from enterprises worldwide and, not least, from Canada.