Green Economy
An inclusive green economy is one that improves human well-being and builds social equity while reducing environmental risks and scarcities. An inclusive green economy is an alternative to today's dominant economic model, which exacerbates inequalities, encourages waste, triggers resource scarcities, and generates widespread threats to the environment and human health.
Over the past decade, the concept of the green economy has emerged as a strategic priority for many governments. By transforming their economies into drivers of sustainability, these countries will be primed to take on the major challenges of the 21st century – from urbanization and resource scarcity to climate change and economic volatility.
In 2008, UN Environment launched the Green Economy Initiative (GEI), a programme of global research and country-level assistance designed to motivate policymakers to support environmental investments. At the UN General Assembly 2015, UN Environment published “Uncovering pathways towards an inclusive green economy”. The document stresses concepts such as sharing, circularity, collaboration, solidarity, resilience, opportunity, and interdependence.
UN Environment’s Green Economy Initiative (GEI)
United Nations Environment launched the Green Economy Initiative (GEI) in 2008, which consisted of global research and country-level assistance encouraging policymakers to support environmental investments within the context of sustainable development. An Inclusive Green Economy (IGE) has evolved from earlier work on Green Economy. In its simplest expression, such an economy is low carbon, efficient and clean in production, but also inclusive in consumption and outcomes, based on sharing, circularity, collaboration, solidarity, resilience, opportunity, and interdependence. It is focused on expanding options and choices for national economies, using targeted and appropriate fiscal and social protection policies, and backed up by strong institutions that are specifically geared to safeguarding social and ecological floors. And it recognizes that there are many and diverse pathways to environmental sustainability.
Our approach speaks to the multiple benefits-economic, health, security, social and environmental-that such an approach can bring to nations, mindful of the different challenges faced by states along the development continuum, be they developed, developing, emerging, or in conflict. It argues for policies that are nuanced, context-dependent, and modulated. An integrated approach can help states understand how to maximize, prioritize, and sequence the different benefits to human well-being that can be derived from a healthy environment. At the end of the day, an inclusive green economy must provide not only for jobs and income, but for our health, our environment, and our future. This is our common challenge: creating the conditions for enhanced prosperity and growing social equity, within the contours of a finite and fragile planet.
Reference : https://www.unep.org