The greening of the economy is a shared goal for advanced and less advanced economies alike, particularly where sustained and inclusive employment is an objective for policy-makers. However, the challenges of such greening, and the implications for employment and skills, vary across regions and countries. In the transition from high- to low-carbon production, labour market impacts are becoming more evident and changes will likely affect all workers. However, while these changes may be minor for the majority, they will be substantial for a small number of industries and professions. Preparation for the adjustments is essential to take full advantage of green growth opportunities. Policy-makers today are concerned with how to help their economies to move away from a low-level approach (low job quality, low environment protection, low skills), towards high skills, high productivity, and sustainable economies. This report provides evidence and policy analysis to foster an equitable shift to greener economies and more sustainable societies.
Adaptation presents developing countries with the ultimate dual challenge – building a rapidly evolving, sustainable economy within an environment increasingly altered by the impacts of climate change. To meet this challenge, adaptation policy must find balance and create synergy between the two, as climate resilience and economic resilience go hand in hand.
Economic development is associated with structural change, including an evolving sector composition, the emergence of new comparative advantages and skills, and shifts in consumer demand as a result of rising incomes – all of which has implications for adaptation. Existing attempts to adapt developing economies to climate change have nonetheless ignored these economic dynamics. Current approaches to adaptation often seek to preserve current structures, for example by protecting agricultural output, which neither acknowledges nor takes advantage of the fact that the status quo is evolving.
The aim of this paper is to provide a critical review of the literature on the econometric analyses of firm-level determinants to eco-innovation. The review reveals some gaps in knowledge. First, an integrated theoretical framework which merges the insights from different approaches is missing. Second, the influence of some variables is still unsettled (demand-pull and cost-savings), whereas others have hardly been included in previous analyses (internal and international factors). Third, studies on the drivers to eco-innovation versus general innovation are relatively scarce with respect to those on the drivers to eco-innovation in general. Fourth, analyses of the relevance of different determinants to eco-innovation for distinct eco-innovator and eco-innovation types have largely been missing. Fifth, studies on middle-income and developing countries are still scarce. Sixth, the econometric analyses have relied on microeconometric methods based on cross-section data (mostly logit and probit models), whereas the use of panel data is virtually absent.
Attempts to govern, sustainably, the global environment and manage the world economy without destabilising crises, remain hopelessly disconnected. Since the original Earth Summit conference we have lived with an economic model based on debt-fuelled over consumption that coexists with vast levels of poverty and inequality. Comparable dynamics are visible in most economic sectors. Many working in the fields of environment and development now find that systematic problems require a systemic solution. This paper puts forward 6 challenges to lay the foundations for systemic change: Develop a national transition plan that puts countries on paths to operate within planetary boundaries, and on timescales sufficiently quick to preserve key, ecological life support functions; don’t start from a growth perspective; agree to develop and implement new measures of economic success; commit to reduce income and wealth inequalities between and within nations; put fiscal policy and public expenditure centre stage in managing economic transition; and recapture the financial sector for the public good.
For decades governments have allowed a single indicator, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), to assume dominance as the critical measure of a nation’s progress. It is now widely recognised by politicians and officials across the world that we must move beyond GDP and recognise it for what it is – a measure of economic exchange, which is itself a means to an end; the ‘end’ being the achievement of high well-being for all within environmental limits (‘sustainable well-being’). This paper focuses on ways of measuring environmental sustainability and well-being, and offers a view from the global South which entails measures of both of these. It calls for governments around the world to: