Green economy and green growth can best be pursued by using a multi-disciplinary approach, mobilising know-how and best practices from various fields. To this end, GIZ has established an Exchange Platform on Green Economy and Green Growth. It facilitates learning about the green economy, further develops services for our partners and commissioning parties and promotes good practices across our programmes.
The platform draws on the long-standing expertise of GIZ’s Sectoral Department, which offers services and concepts that contribute to the development of a green economy, in particular in the areas of:
- Economic development and employment
- Good governance and human rights
- Water, energy and transport
- Rural development and agriculture
- Environment and climate change
Are poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability conflicting objectives? Or do the two goals support each other? Both are traditional domains of policy-makers aiming to promote green growth and pro-poor or inclusive growth. But in recent years, market based approaches that harness the capabilities of private-sector players have gained credibility and attracted increasing attention. In the process, traditional roles have been blurred. Today, solutions to tackle poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability are being implemented by a wide array of actors.
Strategies to alleviate poverty and achieve environmental sustainability are often highly interlinked and definitions by both policy and business actors of one strategy will often cross-reference the other. UNESCAP’s definition of green growth, for example, refers to ‘socially inclusive development,’ while the Millennium Development Goals include ‘Ensure Environmental Sustainability’ as one of their eight goals. On the business level, definitions of inclusive business strategies state that their objective is to include the poor as ‘participants in low-carbon and climate-resilient growth.’
A green economy in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication (hereafter green economy) requires major structural and technological changes in key sectors such as infrastructure, industry, agriculture and transportation. Near-term investments in all these sectors must be financed for long-term sustainable development. This Issues Brief provides a picture of current and required financial flows for the transition with a focus on identifying major gaps in finance. The Brief outlines proposals for finance including those from the Rio + 20 Compilation text and where possible attempts to convey their feasibility and potential. It suggests that the transition will require the identification of new sources, the streamlining of existing channels and the effective design and utilisation of instruments to leverage private investment.
This publication summarises the proceedings of a conference organised during April 2012 in Lisbon by the think tank Platform for Sustainable Growth (Plataforma para o Crescimento Sustentável) on the topic “How can we foster green growth?” Speakers included António Costa e Silva (CEO of Partex), Joy Kim (Advisor at United Nations Environmental Programme), Peter Vis (Chief of Cabinet of the EU Commissioner on Climate Action) and Carlos Pimenta (Coordinator of Sustainability at PCS). The aim of the event and the follow-up publication was to identify the role green economy can play to achieve sustainable growth in Europe in general and Portugal in particular.
This paper explores the high dependency of a number of countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) on mineral resources, and the relative lack of expected social benefits from the extractive industries sector in these countries. The brief finds opportunities for greener and inclusive growth by linking extractive industries to other development goals beyond economic returns, as well as by integrating environmental concerns more broadly into economic development plans.