Towards a green economy: pathways to sustainable development and poverty eradication

• United Nations Environment Programme

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22 November 2011The greening of economies is not generally a drag on growth but rather a new engine of growth, and is also a vital strategy for the elimination of persistent poverty.

The report also seeks to motivate policy makers to create the enabling conditions for increased investments in a transition to a green economy. The Green Economy Report is compiled by UNEP’s Green Economy Initiative in collaboration with economists and experts worldwide.

The last two years have seen the idea of a “green economy” float out of its specialist moorings in environmental economics and into the mainstream of policy discourse. It is found increasingly in the words of heads of state and finance ministers, in the text of G20 communiques, and discussed in the context of sustainable development and poverty eradication.

This recent traction for a green economy concept has no doubt been aided by widespread disillusionment with the prevailing economic paradigm, a sense of fatigue emanating from the many concurrent crises and market failures experienced during the very first decade of the new millennium, including especially the financial and economic crisis of 2008. But at the same time, there is increasing evidence of a way forward, a new economic paradigm – one in which material wealth is not delivered perforce at the expense of growing environmental risks, ecological scarcities and social disparities.