This paper studies the reality and the potential for green industrial policy. It provides a summary of the green industrial policies, broadly understood, for five countries. It then considers the relation between green industrial policies and trade disputes, emphasizing the Brazil-United States dispute involving ethanol and the broader United States-China dispute. The theory of public policy provides many lessons for green industrial policy. The authors highlight four of these lessons, involving the Green Paradox, the choice of quantities versus prices with endogenous investment, the coordination issues arising from emissions control, and the ability of green industrial policies to promote cooperation in reducing a global public bad like carbon emissions.
This book outlines the Republic of Korea’s goals for green growth, including its green growth strategy, legislation and plans. Commercialization of green technologies is highlighted as a key platform for economic growth and job creation. The book was initially published in January 2011 in Korean under the title, “The Right Way to Know about Green Growth” with the support of the Republic of Korea Presidential Committee on Green Growth.
The world is increasingly faced with the challenges stemming from the need to sustain an expanding global population while simultaneously addressing the environmental pressures that could threaten our ability to accomplish this. Green growth has emerged as a strategy to balance the historically divergent priorities of achieving economic growth and social development without putting at risk the environmental systems and natural capital we rely so heavily upon. This approach emphasizes the environmental and economic gains achieved by reducing inefficiencies in the management of resources and the stimulation of new sources of activity through innovation and green market growth.
IISD and the Partnership for Procurement and Green Growth conducted an investigation to explore the correlation between public procurement and the tipping point at which it serves as a trigger for green industrial innovation, expansion and growth. Building on the existing body of work that supports the case for green public procurement, the report demonstrates that procurement is becoming more than just a purchasing tool, but is increasingly positioned as an economic driver, an incentive for green innovation and green industrialisation, a support for small and medium enterprise (SME) competitiveness and much more.
Environmental information transparency performs social and learning functions indispensable for green growth. Still facing the challenges of a lack of local commitment and less than optimal institutional capacity, China has made substantial progress on granting and enforcing the public right to environmental information. This will help build the social infrastructure necessary for green growth — the rule of law, trust, social organizing, consensus building, social learning, and collective action. A focused approach is desirable because resources and capacity are limited in China — targeting pollutants and sectors that exert the most environmental and health risks as well as those that need technological upgrade most urgently. Then, in the long run, environmental information transparency serves the fundamental goals of ‘good public policy and legitimate governmental decision-making’ on environment-related issues in China, in line with both the green growth framework and the long-term development goal of constructing a harmonious society in China.