scholarly journals Moving Towards Integrated Policy Formulation and Evaluation: The Green Economy Model

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea M. Bassi

Abstract The mainstreaming of concepts related to the Green Economy, an action-oriented approach to reach sustainable development, has increased demands for integrated models that can shed light on the complex relations existing across social, economic and environmental indicators. A gap exists, whereby our thinking is rapidly evolving, but the tools available are still in the vast majority of cases sectorial, leading to planning processes taking place in silos. To avoid the emergence of side effects, and anticipate future threats and opportunities, a more systemic approach is needed. The Green Economy Model (GEM) was created taking into account four main capitals and their interconnections: physical capital, human capital, social capital and natural capital. The application of GEM in 10 countries has shown its capability to coherently represent reality and generate results that can more effectively inform decision making.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (14) ◽  
pp. 7746
Author(s):  
Leire Barañano ◽  
Naroa Garbisu ◽  
Itziar Alkorta ◽  
Andrés Araujo ◽  
Carlos Garbisu

The concept of bioeconomy is a topic of debate, confusion, skepticism, and criticism. Paradoxically, this is not necessarily a negative thing as it is encouraging a fruitful exchange of information, ideas, knowledge, and values, with concomitant beneficial effects on the definition and evolution of the bioeconomy paradigm. At the core of the debate, three points of view coexist: (i) those who support a broad interpretation of the term bioeconomy, through the incorporation of all economic activities based on the production and conversion of renewable biological resources (and organic wastes) into products, including agriculture, livestock, fishing, forestry and similar economic activities that have accompanied humankind for millennia; (ii) those who embrace a much narrower interpretation, reserving the use of the term bioeconomy for new, innovative, and technologically-advanced economic initiatives that result in the generation of high-added-value products and services from the conversion of biological resources; and (iii) those who stand between these two viewpoints. Here, to shed light on this debate, a contextualization of the bioeconomy concept through its links with related concepts (biotechnology, bio-based economy, circular economy, green economy, ecological economics, environmental economics, etc.) and challenges facing humanity today is presented.


2010 ◽  
Vol 113-116 ◽  
pp. 317-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fang Su ◽  
Hai Yang Shang

For a long time, these are deeply entrenched in people’s thinking and the institutions or policies of economic activities that the resources are unlimited and the environment exists priceless. Environmentally augmented household livelihood assets were collected from 300 sample households within the HeiHe River Basin. Results show that physical assets possess a maximum value (0.609) and natural assets possess relatively low values (0.241). The human capital, natural capital, physical capital, financial capital and social capital are all important factors to influence the responses. An increment of one unit should reduce the occurrence to participate in ecological compensation for natural capital. Therefore, the local governments should actively introduce the relevant supporting measures in order to provide more non-agricultural employment opportunities for farmers.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 645
Author(s):  
Shahzad Ahmad ◽  
Zhang Caihong ◽  
E. M. B. P. Ekanayake

The concept of sustainable livelihood garnered a prominent status in humanitarian and international development organizations that aim to calculate and build a livelihood for agroforestry farmers. However, it is difficult to measure and analyze as well as visualize the data of livelihood improvement from agroforestry (AF). This paper comparatively assessed 400 smallholder farmers’ livelihood through AF and conventional farming (CF) systems in the Northern Irrigated Plain of Pakistan. The findings showed that AF has a mixed impact on farmers’ livelihood capital, including human, physical, natural, financial and social capital. Specifically, AF significantly improved financial capital in terms of timber, non-timber and fuel wood income. Furthermore, the physical capital (buffalo plough, generators and sprinklers), natural capital (the extent of cultivated land and land ownership; the number of households (HHs) growing vegetables, fruit crops and medicinal crops) and social capital (the number of social groups that HHs involved and number of HHs sharing crop seeds) of AF farmer HHs were significantly improved compared to those of CF farmers. However, the results show that financial capital gain through crop income, HHs owning high-value vehicles (tractors) and farmers trust and collective activities were significantly higher in CF farmers than AF ones. Therefore, to enhance the contribution of AF to rural livelihood, advanced extension services and government involvement on research planning and implementing are needed.


Author(s):  
Francesco Caselli

This book examines how the mode of production, or production technology, varies systematically across countries, depending on their endowments of different factors of production. Using aggregate production functions as analytical tools, the book shows that technology differences and technical change are factor biased: they change not only the overall efficiency with which a country exploits its bundle of productive inputs, but also the relative efficiency with which different factors contribute to production. It argues that the efficiency with which skilled labor is used relative to unskilled labor is greater in richer countries than in poorer countries. It also explains why the efficiency with which reproducible capital (equipment and structure) is used relative to natural capital (mineral deposits, land, timber, etc.) is higher in rich countries, and the absolute efficiency with which physical capital is used appears to be not lower, and may even be higher, in poor countries.


2018 ◽  
Vol 193 ◽  
pp. 05003
Author(s):  
Nina Simionova ◽  
Irina Krivosheeva ◽  
Dmitriy Krivosheev ◽  
Mikhail Lunyakov

Taking into account that construction is one of the resource-intensive economic sectors, which is reflected in natural capital consumption and taking out the land resources from the turnover, it significantly affects the environmental situation. The conducted review of the previous research in the environmental analysis confirms the importance of the aforementioned problem and the urgency of research continuation to develop a tool for the environmental subsystem management in terms of companies’ sustainable development management. As a uniting tool for quantitative and qualitative analytical methods providing the basis for the choice and implementation of the strategy taking into account environmental requirements, we proposed a method for building of a construction company environmental profile, a scorecard with specific indicators underlying such profile as well as approaches for their reference level formation. To ensure the growth of the companies' environmental responsibility, it was proposed to increase the range of the estimated figures used for the formation of the construction companies' rankings including the environmental indicators into the system alongside with the economic and social figures with the account of the achieved outcomes both on the basis of the instantaneous and rate indicators.


Author(s):  
Lint Barrage

Abstract How should carbon be taxed as a part of fiscal policy? The literature on optimal carbon pricing often abstracts from other taxes. However, when governments raise revenues with distortionary taxes, carbon levies have fiscal impacts. While they raise revenues directly, they may shrink the bases of other taxes (e.g. by decreasing employment). This article theoretically characterizes and then quantifies optimal carbon taxes in a dynamic general equilibrium climate–economy model with distortionary fiscal policy. First, this article establishes a novel theoretical relationship between the optimal taxation of carbon and of capital income. This link arises because carbon emissions destroy natural capital: they accumulate in the atmosphere and decrease future output. Consequently, this article shows how the standard logic against capital income taxes extends to distortions on environmental capital investments. Second, this article characterizes optimal climate policy in sub-optimal fiscal settings where income taxes are constrained to remain at their observed levels. Third, this article presents a detailed calibration that builds on the seminal DICE approach but adds features essential for a setting with distortionary taxes, such as a differentiation between climate change production impacts (e.g. on agriculture) and direct utility impacts (e.g. on biodiversity existence value). The central quantitative finding is that optimal carbon tax schedules are 8–24% lower when there are distortionary taxes, compared to the setting with lump-sum taxes considered in the literature.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Corson ◽  
Kenneth Iain MacDonald ◽  
Benjamin Neimark

Over the past two decades, the incorporation of market logics into environment and conservation policy has led to a reconceptualization of “nature.” Resulting constructs like ecosystem services and biodiversity derivatives, as well as finance mechanisms like Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, species banking, and carbon trading, offer new avenues for accumulation and set the context for new enclosures. As these practices have become more apparent, geographers have been at the forefront of interdisciplinary research that has highlighted the effects of “green grabs”—in which “green credentials” are used to justify expropriation of land and resources—in specific locales. While case studies have begun to reveal the social and ecological marginalization associated with green grabs and the implementation of market mechanisms in particular sites, less attention has been paid to the systemic dimensions and “logics” mobilizing these projects. Yet, the emergence of these constructs reflects a larger transformation in international environmental governance—one in which the discourse of global ecology has accommodated an ontology of natural capital, culminating in the production of what is taking shape as “The Green Economy.” The Green Economy is not a natural or coincidental development, but is contingent upon, and coordinated by, actors drawn together around familiar and emergent institutions of environmental governance. Indeed, the terrain for green grabbing is increasingly cultivated through relationships among international environmental policy institutions, organizations, activists, academics, and transnational capitalist and managerial classes. This special issue of Human Geography brings together papers that draw on a range of theoretical perspectives to investigate the systemic dimensions and logics mobilizing green grabs and the creation of new market mechanisms. In inverting the title – “grabbing green” instead of the more conventional green grabs – we explore how “the environment” is being used instrumentally by various actors to extend the potential for capital accumulation under the auspices of “being green.” Using a diversity of empirical material that spans local to global scales, the papers reveal the formation of the social relations and metrics that markets require to function. They identify the “frictions” that inhibit the production of these social relations, and they link particular cases to the scalar configurations of power that mobilize and give them shape.


2020 ◽  
Vol 159 ◽  
pp. 07002
Author(s):  
Galiya Sansyzbayeva ◽  
Laura Ashirbekova ◽  
Kuralay Nurgaliyeva ◽  
Zhuldyz Ametova ◽  
Arailym Asanova

The particular relevance of the study of issues related to global crises is determined by the fact that although they affect the whole of humanity as a whole, the least economically and socially protected layers of the population in the whole world suffer from their consequences. That is why the key concepts of a green economy are natural capital and the ecosystem services it provides. The main priorities of the green economy concept are to increase the well-being of society with minimal impact on the environment. The article discusses the theoretical aspects of the implementation of the concept of “green” economy in Kazakhstan. The main directions of the “green” economy are highlighted and the results of the transition to a green economy are analyzed. The main stages of development of green economy in Kazakhstan are described. The problems of Kazakhstan’s transition to a “green” course of economic development are studied and the need for innovative approaches in the development of green technologies in the country is substantiated.


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (02) ◽  
pp. 92-100
Author(s):  
Ganzorig Gonchigsumlaa

‘Sustainable Development’ becomes core strategic thinking of development agenda in last three decades and recently the ‘Green Economy’ terminology becomes the only tool to achieve it. Both terminologies are not well understood not only among conventional citizens but also among scientists. Sustainable Development is well defined but not the Green Economy. Hence, policy makers face serious challenges to convert the vague concept of Green Economy in the planning processes. The paper investigates the level of knowledge of both terminologies from policy makers and monitoring and evaluation officials of government organizations in Mongolia. A survey was conducted among 267 officials including 157 planners and 110 monitoring and evaluation officials in 2014. The result shows that the most of the planners, and monitoring and evaluation officials view that the ‘Green Economy’ is an environmentally friendly economies. However, important two aspects of the Green Economy misunderstood or never taken into account, which are improving human well-being and social equity. Planners’ understanding of Sustainable Development and Green Economy is better than the monitoring and evaluation officials. The author recommend that to improve the knowledge of the Green Economy and its diverse terminologies among planners and monitoring and evaluation officials.


Author(s):  
Phiri Rodgers

The need to enhance environmental sustainability, sustainable development and growth that takes into account the well-being of the people and nature because of the increased production and consumption of goods and services is the major driver to the introduction of green economy in Zambia and countries in southern Africa. This article examines the extent to which local government in Zambia has embraced green growth and green economy and critically analyses the concept of green economy and green growth. This study is based on a review of planning and policy documents, a household questionnaire survey and interviews with various institutions, planners and rural development organisations. A number of policies implemented at the local government level were analysed and reflected upon irrespective of whether they contain the components of green growth and green economy and the extent to which they contribute to attaining green economy. The article argues that the need for economic diversification is important as far as green economy is concerned. The article recommends the need to invest in research and development in order to find more carbon-free economic activities. The conclusion is that local government is key to achieving green growth and green economy, because it is involved at all levels, from policy formulation to implementation.


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