From Growth to Green Growth : A Framework

Green growth is about making growth
processes resource-efficient, cleaner and more resilient
without necessarily slowing them. This paper aims at
clarifying these concepts in an analytical framework and at
proposing foundations for green growth. The green growth
approach proposed here is based on (1) focusing on what
needs to happen over the next 5-10 years before the world
gets locked into patterns that would be prohibitively
expensive and complex to modify and (2) reconciling the
short and the long term, by offsetting short-term costs and
maximizing synergies and economic co-benefits. This, in
turn, increases the social and political acceptability of
environmental policies. This framework identifies channels
through which green policies can potentially contribute to
economic growth. However, only detailed country- and
context-specific analyses for each of these channels could
reach firm conclusion regarding their actual impact on
growth. Finally, the paper discusses the policies that can
be implemented to capture these co-benefits and
environmental benefits. Since green growth policies pursue a
variety of goals, they are best served by a combination of
instruments: price-based policies are important but are only
one component in a policy tool-box that can also include
norms and regulation, public production and direct
investment, information creation and dissemination,
education and moral suasion, or industrial and innovation policies.