Green Economy: an Engine for Development?

The concept of a ”green economy” has been around for a few years, but has gained in recogni-tion and weight following the Rio+20 Conference in 2012, which recognised it as “one of the important tools available for achieving sustainable development”. While the Conference did not agree on a precise definition of the green economy concept, there is now an increasing body of experience from countries around the world that are implementing green economy initia-tives, strategies or policies. These efforts are loosely coordinated by UNEP, which serves as an information hub to promote exchange on best practices. In this paper, we argue that trying to arrive at an exact and universal definition of the green economy might be useful in theory, but appears very unlikely in practice. Rather, what we see is a common understanding of the con-cept that emerges from its concrete implementation in countries around the world.