Anthropogenic climate change is a formidable global challenge. Yet countries’ contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions and the climate change impacts they face are poles apart. These differences, as well as countries’ different capacities and development levels, have been internationally acknowledged by including the notion of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) and Respective Capabilities under the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Until the 1980s, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon had largely been the result of public policies (incentives, investment). Since the 1990s, with basic infrastructure installed and cattle-ranching turned profitable due to innovations, deforestation has relied on its own endogenous dynamics. To stop this trend, politics will have to use both traditional and modern instruments for influencing economic behaviour, that is, control and sanctions as well as dialogue and negotiation. Since democratisation, civil society organisations (CSOs) have grown in the Amazon region, often with important support from foreign non-governmental organisations. Today, they are important partners for sustainable, bottom-up development strategies. This has become evident in the political mobilisation against two large public infrastructure investment projects: the dam and hydroelectric plant of Belo Monte; and the paving of the federal highway BR-163 between Cuiabá and Santarém.
The notion of green economies seems to have gained momentum in both developed and developing countries. For South Africa, the transition to a green economy presents a mix of challenges and opportunities. This stems from the fact that South Africa faces myriad socio-economic realities that force the country to maintain a generation of industries that contribute directly to the production of greenhouse gases in order to reduce unemployment, poverty and inequality. This paper provides an overview of South Africa’s attempts to migrate to a green economy. It specifically looks at the domestic and continental implications of South Africa’s reorientation of its economy towards a low-carbon growth path. While the country has managed to put together impressive policies meant to steer it onto a trajectory of low carbon economic growth, the realities facing South Africa point to an opposite direction.
This publication serves as a background document highlighting initiatives which have been successfully implemented to facilitate a transformation to a green development on different levels: the level of single companies, the household level and the macro-economic level (countries).
By bringing together the large number of existing best practice examples, an argument is made that a concerted effort could realise the transition towards the urgently required systemic change. In addition concepts that go beyond “Green Growth”, resulting in a more “colourful” development are discussed.