The Life Beyond Growth publication by AtKisson for the Institute for Studies in Happiness, Economy and Society, explores, as a basis, alternatives and complements to GDP-measured growth as a framing concept for social progress. The report begins by analysing the history of the economic growth paradigm, summarising the key factors that have supported the dominance of growth in global history, and then continues to provide insight on some of the contemporary political factors and technical initiatives that have led to new thinking on green growth and human well-being as indicators for social progress.
The document aims to provide a summation of the current state of the art in relation to rethinking economic growth in favour of alternative models such as green growth. It concludes with a section on the ethics of growth and happiness and a vision for the future.
This summary was prepared by UNDESA.
This synthesis report focused on five key sectors (agriculture, fisheries, building, transportation and tourism) in Barbados to scope the transition to a green economy on the island. In particular, the study focuses on the applicability of the accepted UNEP definition of green economy to Small Islands Developing States, of which Barbados is one.
Barbados is vulnerable to both fluctuations in the price of its imported fossil fuels and at risk from the destruction of its marine and coastal ecosystems from climate change therefore the report states that the pursuit of a greener path to economic development is highly attractive to the country.
The study has found that there is no existing Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCM) in Vietnam but that opportunities exist for poverty reduction projects to derive a source of funding from the international VCMs. It is however impossible at this point in time to quantify the scale of the opportunity as VCMs are in their nascent stages of development and represent a fickle and unreliable income stream that fluctuates significantly with the economy and voluntary sales and prices have declined significantly since the economic crash.
This paper explores the policy coherence for development (PCD) dimensions of green growth strategies pursued by OECD member states. The coherence challenge is to design OECD green growth policies in order to maximise the positive synergies and minimise the negatives effects on pro-poor growth in developing countries. Coherence issues across three cross-cutting themes, climate change, biodiversity and innovation policy, are considered, before a comprehensive set of PCD issues related to agricultural livelihoods, fisheries livelihoods and the energy and minor sectors in developing countries are discussed. In doing so three PCD case studies, Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the reform of EU biofuels policy and EU fisheries access, are presented and lessons for the green growth agenda are derived.