The book includes a survey assessing the performance of the United Nations and its member states in all key areas, laying down a road map for sustainable development in the future. Deploying the Human Green Development Index (HGDI) as a new metric for an era in which human survival is intimately dependent on the viability of the Earth as a clean and sustainable habitat, the report showcases a large array of data, including HGDI indicators for more than 120 nations.
The report was launched at the beginning of China’s Twelfth Five-year Period (2011-2015). After revising the measurement system of the Green Development Index 2010, the report measures the green development level of 30 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions as well as 34 large and medium-sized cities in China. The city-based measurement is first introduced into the report. Both the province and the city Green Development Index systems consist of three parts: i) the green degree of economic growth, ii) the carrying potential of natural resources and environment, and iii) the support degree of government policies. The three parts reflect the production and resource usage efficiency, the situation of environment and resources protection and pollutants emission, and government’s related investment and management respectively.
The report also summarizes the achievements in China’s green development during the Eleventh Five-year Period (2006-2010). The China Green Development Index Report 2011 provides a comprehensive evaluation of green economy developments in China and its importance to China’s switch in economic development model.
The Global Green Economy Index (GGEI) provides a ranking of how 60 countries and 70 cities perform in the global green economy and how expert practitioners perceive this performance. The GGEI performance index uses quantitative and qualitative indicators to measure how well each country performs on four key dimensions: leadership & climate change, efficiency sectors, markets & investment and environment & natural capital. Then, the GGEI perception survey collects assessments from expert practitioners on these same four dimensions.
The South African government has named the transition towards a greener economy one of its priorities. Meanwhile it has developed a new multilevel integrated planning process, and announced a massive public infrastructure investment plan. The converging point of these three dynamics should be the integration of green infrastructure principles into the different plans as the foundation of the green transition. This paper uses a policy integration analytical framework to assess whether this convergence is in fact taking shape. It analyses the level of integration of green infrastructure principles into the different plans and suggests options to move the green infrastructure agenda forward.
At the Davos forum of January 2014, a group of 14 countries pledged to launch negotiations on liberalizing trade in "green goods" (also known as "environmental" goods), focusing on the elimination of tariffs for an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation list of 54 products. The paper shows that the Davos group, with an average tariff of 1.8 percent, has little to offer as countries have avoided submitting products with tariff peaks for tariff reductions. Even if the list were extended to the 411 products on the World Trade Organization list, taking into account tariff dispersion, the tariff structure on environmental goods would be equivalent to a uniform tariff of 3.4 percent, about half the uniform tariff-equivalent for non-environmental goods. Enlarging the number of participants to low-income countries might be possible as, on average, their imports would not increase by more than 8 percent. However, because of the strong complementarities between trade in environmental goods and trade in environmental services, these should also be brought to the negotiation table, although difficulties in reaching agreement on their scope are likely to be great.