The notion of green growth emerged in 2009. Since then, policy makers and practitioners have largely adopted the term. Although rather intermittently, there have been academic observations on green growth, with the term often being cited as a paradigm and a policy guide for generating new sources of growth. The most important reasons for the surge in green growth today as a new trend and an international agenda item are the rather unsatisfactory results and pitfalls of sustainable development, which has failed at promoting a tangible international environmental principle or a concrete policy framework. Green growth has been proposed as an alternative simultaneously to foster the dynamics of global environmental governance and to reinvigorate the world economy. This study examines to what extent green growth plays a complementary role in existing global environmental governance. Available evidence provides reasonable grounds for arguing that a positive outcome may well be expected from the evolution of green growth architecture and followed by practical policies. It became a global agenda out of a few influential national governments’ control. However, decision makers in the leading countries, both developed and developing, must be willing to continue implementing what has been discussed and agreed thus far, beyond changes in political leadership and administrations.
Green economy has become one of the most fashionable terms in global environmental public policy discussions and forums.
Anthropogenic climate change is a formidable global challenge. Yet countries’ contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions and the climate change impacts they face are poles apart.
This analysis of the emergence since 2008 of the green economy agenda and the related idea of ‘green growth’ focusses upon the articulation of these discourses within key international economic and environmental institutions and evaluates whether this implies the beginning of an institutional tra
The alleged capacity of Payment for Environmental Services (PES) to reach conservation policy goals, while reducing poverty in a cost-effective manner, makes it an extremely attractive development instrument for policymakers and international funding agencies.