The United Nations Environment Management Group (EMG) has released a new report, providing a comprehensive overview of the various green economy knowledge products developed and implemented by the UN system.
Prepared as a response to the 18th meeting of the EMG senior officials, the report analyses the results of a stocktaking exercise, carried out by the EMG Issue Management Group on Green Economy, on existing UN system-wide green economy knowledge products.
The report, “Green Economy Knowledge Products by UN Agencies and Partners", analyses a total of 122 knowledge products, ranging from generic guidance for conceptualizing policy frameworks, practical toolkits, case studies and best practices at national and local levels, to capacity building facilities and knowledge exchange platforms. In addition, 25 specific resources are highlighted through case studies, illustrating the wide range of products currently available.
By providing an overview of the current green economy knowledge product landscape and analyzes its composition in terms of product type, target audience, policy focus, sector and geographic focus, the report provides suggestions on how users can make full use of these resources, and identifies possible knowledge gaps to be further addressed by UN agencies and partners.
Key findings through the analysis include:
- Almost all products target national governments and inter-governmental practitioners as their main audience.
- The most common type of resource aims to support green economy policy making. Over half of the products feature case studies or best practices.
- Finance and investment, environmental and natural resources and fiscal policy are the three most frequently-tackled policy areas, while social inclusiveness is featured in less than one-third of reviewed products.
- The importance of the water-food-energy nexus is well reflected in the key sector focus, with energy, water and agriculture being the top three key sectors identified.
- Close to half of the knowledge products analyzed have been developed for global application (49 per cent); Asia, Latin America and Africa are the three regions with the highest knowledge product focus.
Through the stocktaking exercise, a number of knowledge gaps were identified, yielding insight into where efforts might be needed to further assist green economy policy design and implementation. These include:
- There is a need for more knowledge on private sector engagement and capacity building. Despite the important role played by the private sector in transitioning to a green economy (e.g. through its investing and innovating capacities), there is a significant lack of knowledge products focused on private sector engagement
- Knowledge products focused on green economy implementation at the local level are missing. While policies are formulated at the nation level, implementation often takes place at the local level. Only 7 per cent of reviewed knowledge products are aimed at supporting local policy implementation.
- Social inclusion as a pillar of inclusive green growth is under-represented among current knowledge products. While a small number of reviewed products touch on the topic of social inclusiveness, very few (less than 10) specifically address the issue.
- Redundancies need to be reduced across existing knowledge products. A lack of coordination and collaboration among many agencies and partners has resulted in a duplication of coverage. Agencies are advised to strengthen their coordination and seek greater synergy as a means of maximizing efficiency.
With regards to the last point, given the multi-disciplinary nature of green and inclusive economies, the report describes how knowledge creation would benefit greatly from increased cooperation and collaboration among critical institutional actors. Initiatives like the Green Growth Knowledge Platform and the joint work of the AfDB, OECD, UN and World Bank on “A Toolkit of Policy Options to Support Inclusive Green Growth”, are provided as examples of successful efforts to pool expertise, collectively identify and address knowledge gaps and create compelling knowledge products.
To learn more, explore the report and its supporting resources:
- Main report, focusing on the analysis of 122 knowledge products of green economy, green growth and low carbon development, submitted by EMG members, can be accessed here.
- An annex with a full list of the products submitted.
- An excel spreadsheet, which accompanies the report and the annex. The spreadsheet provides a user-friendly means through which users can search, filter and sort the data available in the annex.