Green growth is a relatively new concept aimed at focusing attention on achieving sustainable development through the efficient use of environmental assets without slowing economic growth. This paper presents a real-world application of the concept, and identifies viable policy options for achieving a complementary environmental regulatory framework that minimizes output and employment losses. The analysis utilizes macro level data from the Turkish economy, and develops an applied general equilibrium model to assess the impact of a selected number of green policy instruments and public policy intervention mechanisms, including market-based incentives designed to accelerate technology adoption and achieve higher employment and sustainable growth patterns.
This paper analyses the performance of the Dutch “Green Funds Scheme”. This scheme is a policy instrument to advance green projects. The scheme relies on tax compensation for private investors who save or invest in green institutions below market returns. The green institutions select and monitor certified green projects and pass through part of the lower funding costs to investors. Certification of the green projects is based on environmental value-added and innovation. The authors provide a description of the characteristics of this incentive scheme and investigate the scheme's performance.
This article appears in the Special Issue: Green Economy and Sustainable Development.
This article examines the potential contribution of household scale off-grid renewable energy generation to the post-carbon economy. The large-scale focus of the green jobs agenda in high-income countries obscures how small-scale technologies can be a transformative source of employment in developing economies. Debates about what constitutes a green job and their value leaves out the everyday practice of green livelihoods carried out by the urban poor across the African continent in unfavourable institutional contexts where nonrenewable fuel is subsidised and renewable energy inputs are heavily taxed. The article presents experiences from field work in several countries, including Egypt, Nigeria and Kenya to provide practical examples of communities pursuing strategies of income generation, community empowerment and environmental preservation. It argues that scholars and practitioners concerned with both social justice and environmental preservation should embrace a definition of green jobs that is bottom-up or people-centred.
A green economy that incorporates a vision of environmental sustainability and equitable social development requires a fundamental rethinking of the existing economic models which centre on growth. In theory, this rethinking leans towards political ecology, which explores the State's relationship with market and civil society. In practice, more dynamic and inclusive public-private partnerships are being sought after in various domains of sustainable development. However, very little has been clarified with regard to the basic conditions that make dynamic partnerships both sustainable and equitable. This paper proposes to explore potential conditions by drawing on the public procurement of local food for school meals. The so-called home-grown school feeding initiative is a pertinent example because it focuses on the qualities of public services that do not fully follow the conventional free market principle, but instead promote the deliberative engagement of various actors.