Humanity faces serious challenges in the coming decades: climate change,
biodiversity loss, growing inequality, and more. These systemic global crises
cannot be tackled in isolation because they are all interconnected. But our
economic systems are not fit enough to deliver a good balance of environmental
and social goals.
Economies are, at heart, a collection of rules
and norms that reward some behaviours and punish others. In their current form,
our economies incentivise over-consumption, degrade communal bonds and destroy
natural wealth. But this is not inevitable or unavoidable; it is simply how our
economies have evolved to operate. To solve these problems, a new economic
vision is required.
The vision: a fair, green economic future.
Our vision of a green economy is one that
provides prosperity for all within the ecological limits of the planet. It
follows five key principles, each of which draws on important precedents in
international policy and which together can guide economic reform in diverse
contexts.
1. The Well-being Principle.
A green economy enables people to create and enjoy
prosperity.
- The green
economy is people-centred.
Its purpose is to create genuine, shared prosperity.
- It focuses on growing wealth that will support
well-being. This wealth is not merely financial
but includes the full range of human, social, physical and natural
capitals.
- It prioritizes
investment and access to the sustainable
natural systems, infrastructure,
knowledge and education needed for people to prosper.
- It offers opportunities for green
and decent livelihoods, enterprises and jobs.
- It is built on collective action for
public goods, yet is based on individual choices
2. The Justice Principle.
The green economy promotes equity within and between
generations.
- The green
economy is inclusive
and non-discriminatory. It shares
decision-making, benefits and costs fairly; avoids elite capture and
especially supports women’s
empowerment.
- It promotes
the equitable distribution of opportunity and outcome,
reducing disparities between people, while also giving sufficient space
for wildlife and wilderness.
- It takes a long-term perspective on
the economy, creating wealth and resilience that serve the interests of future citizens,
while also acting urgently to tackle today’s multi-dimensional poverty and
injustice.
- It is based on solidarity and social
justice, strengthening trust and social ties and supporting
human rights, the rights of workers, indigenous peoples and minorities and
the right to sustainable development.
- It promotes empowerment of
business enterprises; large and small, social enterprises and sustainable
livelihoods.
- It seeks a fast and fair transition and
covers its costs - leaving no-one behind, enabling vulnerable groups to be
agents of transition and innovating in social
protection and
reskilling.
3. The Planetary Boundaries Principle.
The green economy safeguards,
restores and invests in nature.
- An inclusive
green economy recognizes
and nurtures nature’s diverse values - functional values of
providing goods and services that underpin the economy, nature’s cultural values that
underpin societies and nature’s ecological values that
underpin all of life itself.
- It
acknowledges the limited
substitution ability of natural capital with other
capitals, employing the precautionary
principle to avoid loss of critical natural capital and
breaching ecological limits.
- It invests in
protecting, growing and restoring biodiversity, soil, water, air and
natural systems.
- It is innovative in
managing natural systems, informed by their properties such as circularity
and aligning with local community livelihoods based on biodiversity and
natural systems.
4. The Efficiency and Sufficiency Principle.
The green economy is geared to support sustainable
consumption and production.
- An inclusive
green economy is low-carbon, resource-conserving, diverse and circular. It
embraces new models of economic development that address the challenge of creating prosperity
within planetary boundaries.
- It recognises
there must be a
significant global shift to limit consumption of natural resources to
physically sustainable levels if we are to
remain within planetary boundaries.
- It recognizes
a ‘social floor’ of
basic goods and services consumption that is essential to meet people’s
well-being and dignity, as well as unacceptable ‘peaks’ of consumption.
- It aligns
prices, subsidies and incentives with true
costs to
society, through mechanisms where the ‘polluter pays’ and/or
where benefits accrue to those who deliver inclusive green outcomes.
5. The Good Governance Principle.
The green economy is guided by integrated,
accountable and resilient institutions.
- An inclusive
green economy is evidence-based - its
norms and institutions are interdisciplinary, deploying both sound science
and economics along with local knowledge for adaptive strategy.
- It is
supported by institutions that are integrated,
collaborative and coherent - horizontally
across sectors and vertically across governance levels - and
with adequate capacity to meet their respective roles in effective,
efficient and accountable ways.
- It requires public participation,
prior informed consent, transparency, social dialogue, democratic
accountability and freedom from vested interests in all institutions –
public, private and civil society - so that enlightened leadership is
complemented by societal demand.
- It promotes devolved decision-making for
local economies and management of natural systems while maintaining strong
common, centralized standards, procedures and compliance systems.
- It builds a financial system with the purpose of delivering well-being and sustainability, set up in ways that safely serve the interests of society.
The green economy is a universal and transformative change to the global status quo. It will require a fundamental shift in government priorities. Realising this change is not easy but it is necessary, if we are ever to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
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