Green Growth, Innovation and Sustainable Development

Abstract

Sustainable development is certainly a key issue in both developed and developing countries. Finding the balance between the consumer’s demand and the carrying capacity of Earth’s natural resources with regards to economic growth is crucial and the key element of sustainable development. This report explores various aspects of the green growth concept, which builds on a number of existing sustainable development initiatives. Green growth supports the development of green industries, jobs and technologies, whilst allowing for a smooth transition into a green economy. The overall objective is to integrate the key aspects of economic performance, such as poverty reduction, job creation, social responsibility, and improving environmental performance, through mitigation of climate change and biodiversity loss and security of access to clean water and energy. The advantage of the ‘Green Growth’ concept is that it could be applied to advanced and developing economies. It is an analytical concept that looks at shaping a macroeconomic framework, which allows certain sectors to accelerate in their development. Our current socio-economic progress and the overall growth paradigm need to be rethought and restructured as the current focus on quantitative growth has shown to have had detrimental effects on our environment and the preservation of various natural resources for our future generations. Instead, our growth concept should evolve around a more sustainable and qualitative growth, which invests in and embraces new ideas and innovations. Furthermore, this paper presents the necessities of a Green Growth Strategy and one of the tools necessary to help countries shift towards green growth – the Innovation System Framework. It discusses its structure, benefits and limitations, as well as the role UNIDO plays in their Innovation System Programme.