OECD Green Growth: Putting Green Growth at the Heart of Development

OECD Green Growth Newsletter June 2013

Contents

· Putting Green Growth at the Heart of Development

· Focus: Green Growth in Cities

· Making Growth Green & Inclusive: The Case of Ethiopia

· New Date: OECD’s 2013 GG-SD Forum

· Call for papers: 2014 Green Skills Forum

· Recent events

· Recent publications

· Upcoming events

Putting Green Growth at the Heart of Development

Rapidly accelerating growth in developing countries raises the stakes for investments in development but also the opportunities to choose how to develop. Putting Green Growth at the Heart of Development explains why green growth is vital to secure a more sustainable future for developing countries that values natural assets as essential to the well-being of people in developing countries. Covering almost 80 policies and measures from 37 developing countries and regional initiatives, this publication outlines an action-oriented twin-track agenda to guide national and international policies and practices to successfully tackle green growth.

At the national level, the publication highlights three “must-do”s for a green growth policy agenda: i) lead green growth at the highest political levels to establish a long-term vision and guide policy and investment; ii) design, implement and reform policies to directly incentivise green growth; and iii) strengthen institutions for better governance to support learning, assessment of progress, and evidence-based decision making. The support of the international community through flows of development finance, trade in green goods and services, and technology co-operation help to keepi the pace of green innovation and tailor it tailored to the needs of developing countries. Please also see our OECD Insights Blog

Focus: Green Growth in Cities

Green Growth in Cities presents the OECD Green Cities Programme’s main findings and policy recommendations, and provides a preliminary approach to measuring green growth in cities. The report draws on findings and evidence from in-depth urban level green growth studies (Paris, Chicago, Stockholm and Kitakyushu) and two national level studies on urban green growth (China and Korea). It also draws on data from the OECD Metropolitan Database. The report’s recommendations are primarily addressed to policy makers in OECD countries. Numerous findings and recommendations are nonetheless valuable for non-member countries, notably for those with high levels and rates of urbanisation.

· To read a summary this report click here

· To read the press release for the report click here

Green Growth Paper Series – Making Growth Green & Inclusive: The case of Ethiopia

Building on a multi-stakeholder workshop held in Addis Ababa in October 2012, this working paper reflects on green growth policy in Ethiopia – notably the processes culminating in the Climate Resilient Green Economy Strategy. It explores green growth already in action – a range of on-the-ground activities which point to scale-up options for the future. And it begins to assess the country’s enabling framework – those policies, instruments and mechanisms that regulate or incentivise further green growth activity compatible with Ethiopia’s overall development priorities, such as social inclusion, scaling up financing, and ensuring mutually reinforcing benefits from green growth policies.

New Date: The 2013 Green Growth & Sustainable Development Forum will now take place on 5-6 December

This year’s topic for the GG-SD Forum is “Encouraging and leveraging private investment for green infrastructure and technologies, including through innovation policies”. Investments in green infrastructure and technologies will need to be scaled up significantly in the coming years to support countries’ economic and environmental agenda. Given strains on public finances, engaging private sector capital will be key. Policy options to make the best use of limited public funds to leverage private investment for green infrastructure and technologies need to be discussed, as will be the case at the 2013 Green Growth & Sustainable Development Forum. The Forum will take place at OECD headquarters on 5-6 December 2013.

Click here to see information on the inaugural forum that took place in November 2012.

Call for Papers: OECD LEED-Cedefop Green Skills Forum 2014

Cedefop-OECD LEED would like to invite contributions from researchers and policy analysts interested in contributing to the two identified themes of the 2014 Green Skills Forum. Interested participants are asked to submit to greenskillsforum@cedefop.europa.eu by 22nd July 2013 i) an extended abstract (up to 500 words) of their paper in English, and ii) a short CV in English including current position and main publications. For information on the themes of the forum and more, please see our website:www.oecd.org/cfe/leed/greenskillsforum2014.htm

Recent Events

The 2013 Summit of the International Transport Forum

The Annual Summit of Transport Ministers in Leipzig, Germany on 22-24 May, focused on ways to solve transport’s funding dilemma. Transport ministers, business leaders, top researchers and representatives from international organisations debated new approaches to fund and finance the rapidly growing demand for high-quality transport networks and services in an era marked by tight public budgets and the need to stimulate economic growth. The ITF summit was also the opportunity for the OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurr?a to launch the OECD Environment Working Paper “Mobilising Private Investment in Sustainable Transport: The Case of Land-based, Passenger Transport Infrastructure”. For more information click here.

Building Pathways to Greener Growth – the GGKP Practitioners’ Workshop

The Green Growth Knowlede Platform’s first regional practitioner’s workshop “Building Pathways to Greener Growth” (on June 3-4) was hosted by the Government of Indonesia and organized by the World Bank in collaboration with the GIZ and financially supported by the BMZ. This workshop gathered technical experts from international organisations and Asian governments to learn about various green growth policy tools and share experiences on green growth planning, finance and implementation. In the session “Green Growth Results, Measurement and Indicators”, the OECD presented the GGKP Scoping Paper on Green Growth indicators. For more information and presentations click here.

Global Green Growth Summit 2013

The third Global Green Growth Summit on “The Future of Green Growth: Finance, Innovation and Policy” took place on 10-11 June in South Korea. The GGGS 2013 explored how financial innovation leverages technology deployment along with institutional development around the world; with a focus on measuring progress and greening energy and transport systems. In the session “Measuring Progress: Green Growth Indicators”, the OECD presented the GGKP Scoping Paper on Green Growth indicators and discussed its experience with application of indicators in countries. For more information click here.