In the transition path towards the green economy, health is a powerful tool and a key precondition in harnessing sustainable economic development, as well as in eradicating poverty and in ensuring an economically equitable and socially inclusive society.
Greening the economy is essentially about improving human well-being, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities. Thus, health is central to achieving sustainable development. Investments in greening key sectors of the economy, and adopting related policies and strategies, can lead to a healthier population. Moving away from the conventional “grow first, clean up later” path of development into a “green” path of development can result in a more healthy, socially inclusive, productive, equitable and more resilient society.
The green growth concept has both strategic and analytical merit. It has strategic merit by turning a negative debate about a costly constraint (on emissions) into a narrative about potentially attractive opportunities. Authors like Barrett believe that this might change the dynamics of the international negotiations.
Analytically, green growth applies a new, richer and more diverse set of economic tools to a burning issue. This has implications on policy design. The ‘green growth’ narrative reinforces, rather than diminishes, the need for collective action. The economic opportunities that green growth may bring do depend on a joint understanding by a sufficiently large number of players that this is the way to go. This makes green growth a classic collective action problem.
Improving environmental performance, tackling global warming and enhancing resource management are high on the list of global challenges that must be addressed urgently. The information and communications technology (ICT) industry needs to further improve its environmental performance (it is responsible for around 2-3% of the global carbon footprint), and ICT applications have very large potential to enhance performance across the economy and society (the remaining 97-98%). Governments and business associations have introduced a range of programmes and initiatives on ICT and the environment to address environmental challenges, particularly global warming and energy use. Some government programmes also contribute to national targets set in the Kyoto Protocol (e.g. Denmark’s Action Plan for Green IT and Japan’s Green IT Initiative). Business associations have mainly developed initiatives to reduce energy costs and to demonstrate corporate social responsibility. This survey analyses 92 government programmes and business initiatives across 22 OECD countries plus the European Commission.