This paper argues that there are significant opportunities and challenges for promoting inclusive green growth in Africa without costly policy reversal. The paper demonstrates that inclusive green growth entails supporting growth that enhances human wellbeing, social equity and shared economic opportunities while reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities, minimizing inefficient use of natural resources and maintaining biodiversity among others. Strategy for inclusive green growth should integrate environmental, social and economic issues into development plans and policies and take a long-term view of these issues as interdependent issues rather than mutually exclusive ones.
- The relevance and effectiveness of green growth initiatives in South Asia;
- The current status of regional and national green growth strategies;
- Compatibility with traditional and emerging country growth models;
- Evidence on what works and what does not, and the knowledge gap;
- The challenges and opportunities that green growth poses for poverty reduction in the region; and
- The key institutions carrying out research on green growth in the region.
In this publication, CDKN and Climate Strategies present nine papers from leading climate change academics, policy-advisors and subject matter experts on some of the critical deadlocks hampering climate negotiations, and new economic, social and political ideas to move the debate forward. A number of papers within the publication touch on green growth, including the potential for green growth as a new narrative for climate action, experimental institutional restructuring to better realize “climate compatible development” and the implementation of green bonds to mobilize financial resources from the private sector.
Mountain socio-ecological systems produce valuable but complex ecosystem services resulting from biomes stratified by altitude and gravity. These systems are often managed and shaped by smallholders whose marginalization is exacerbated by uncertainties and a lack of policy attention. Human–environment interfaces in mountains hence require holistic policies. The authors analyse the potential of the Global Mountain Green Economy Agenda (GMGEA) in building awareness and thus prompting cross-sectoral policy strategies for sustainable mountain development. Considering the critique of the green economy presented at the Rio + 20 conference, the authors argue that the GMGEA can nevertheless structure knowledge and inform regional institutions about the complexity of mountain socio-ecological systems, a necessary pre-condition to prompt inter-agency collaboration and cross-sectoral policy formulation. The paper draws on two empirical cases in the Pakistani and Nepali Himalayas. In each case, it first shows that lack of awareness has led to a sequence of fragmented interventions with unanticipated, and unwanted, consequences for communities.