‘The biggest private sector: what place for the informal economy in green and inclusive growth?’ was a conference held in London in February 2016 which aimed to build a new policy agenda for integrating the informal economy into inclusive green growth and sustainable development.
The conference was co-hosted by IIED, the Green Economy Coalition (GEC), Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organizing (WIEGO), the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Sahel and West Africa Club (OECD-SWAC).
Featured speakers included researchers, policy makers and practitioners from Brazil, Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia and South Africa. Together, participants demonstrated the variety and vigour of informal economies around the world, shared lessons and benefits, explored challenges for formalisation and highlighted success stories.
This document captures some of the evidence and insights presented at that event and expands on the six guiding principles that emerged from the discussions:
Green growth initiatives to date have often placed the economy and environment front and centre. However, for green growth to fulfil its promise, it needs to also focus on people and address systemic causes of poverty and social exclusion.
Green growth that does not deliver benefits to all stakeholders will not lead to the kind of transformative change envisioned by the global community and outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals.
The ‘Pro poor, inclusive green growth’ report demonstrates how green growth can address some of the drivers of poverty and social exclusion.
Published by the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) in association with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the Green Economy Coalition (GEC), the report stresses that to be effective green growth strategies will need to strengthen institutional and governance structures and respond to people’s needs.
Drawing from a number of case studies the publication provides practical steps for policymakers, business and civil society to work together to deliver inclusive green growth.
E-waste – electrical and electronic waste – is one of today’s fastest growing waste streams. By managing it well, we can recover valuable raw materials and reusable parts, with significant associated emissions savings. But much of its potential is lost when incorrectlly processed by informal and unregulated enterprises. This can damage both people’s health and the environment and intensify the vulnerability of workers.
Informal markets are where most of the world’s poor produce, consume and trade goods. Using case studies from China and India – both with huge informal e-waste sectors – this paper explores how to build inclusive, greener economies that retain the benefits of informal markets, while addressing how and why people are excluded from formal activities. Both countries are stepping up efforts to regulate but are failing to take into account the importance of engaging with the informal e-waste sector. How can drives to clean up harmful practices take their experience and expertise into account? And how can we develop effective policies to tackle pollution while supporting the health, livelihoods and economic activities of the poor and vulnerable?
The year 2015 was pivotal in moving towards a fairer, more sustainable world. The global Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change aimed to address some of the greatest challenges facing humanity, including climate change, environmental degradation and the persistent disparity between rich and poor.
To deliver on the post-2015 agenda, it is clear that traditional forms of development aid will no longer be adequate and that new forms of governance, partnerships and financing – particularly between public, private and informal economy actors – will be required.
This report draws on a series of case studies to consider what works, bringing together an initial evidence base to help inform effective aid and business interventions for sustainable development, with a particular focus on those which involve and support small- and medium-scale businesses.
Private sector hydropower projects are driven primarily by returns on equity investment balanced by perceptions of risk. This can lead to concerns that such projects may overlook environmental and social (E&S) issues that are fundamental to sustainability.
But the two need not be mutually exclusive. We present the business case for adopting the E&S risk management tools developed by the international public finance sector: that better understanding and management of risks can protect expected financial returns and the developer’s reputation. We suggest that bilateral donors support implementation of these tools through a combination of grants and risk management guarantees. In this way, public funds support public goods and local development goals, while private sector funds generate a return on private capital, together furthering sustainable development and growing the global green economy.