Governing the Global Green Economy
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12344 |
| Date | 01 November 2016 |
| Published date | 01 November 2016 |
Governing the Global Green Economy
Kyla Tienhaara
Australian National University
Abstract
The concept of a ‘green economy’has risen to prominence in recent years. However, little has been said about what actors
could drive its widespread adoption at the global level. At present, global governance generally occurs in distinct policy
domains or ‘silos’; the global environment and the global economy are segregated. Within these domains, authority is highly
fragmented among numerous institutions. However, two particular institutions have the broad scope and potentially the
capacity to coordinate and steer green economy efforts: the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Group
of Twenty (G20). This article examines why some (including UNEP itself) have called for the G20 to take a greater role in steer-
ing the green economy and assesses the extent to which it has done so. The article concludes that the G20 was ineffective in
promoting a ‘green recovery’from the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and has similarly failed to stimulate ‘green growth’. Reform
of both the G20 and UNEP could improve global policy on the green economy, but changes to the G20 would likely have a
greater impact.
Policy Implications
•The ‘green economy’discourse recognizes that environmental and economic issues are intimately linked but this is not
reflected in the current structure of global policy forums.
•Reforming the G20 to make it more ‘environmentally friendly’could have a greater impact on global policy than attempts
to ‘upgrade’UNEP.
•Increasing the representativeness of the G20 could give a stronger voice to environmental issues in global economic dis-
cussions.
•Greater involvement of environment ministers in G20 meetings would allow continuity of green economy discussions
across summits and help to overcome the idea that environmental issues represent ‘mission creep’.
The concept of the ‘green economy’has been discussed
and debated in academic circles for more than two decades.
However, in the wake of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis
(GFC) the green economy and related notions of a ‘green
new deal’or ‘green stimulus’and ‘green growth’have been
drawn into the forefront of environmental discourse and
policy debates at the national and international level (Tien-
haara, 2014; Ferguson, 2015). Definitions of these concepts
vary widely. As Huberty et al. (2011, p. 6) note, discussions
about the need for a green economy ‘cover a spectrum
from narrow concerns about climate change on the one
hand, to larger critiques of the environmental sustainability
of modern capitalism on the other’. One critical uniting fac-
tor in all these discussions is the ‘growing recognition that
achieving sustainability rests almost entirely on getting the
economy right’(UNEP 2011, p. 16).
Although there have been numerous contributions on the
merits of a green economy approach (OECD, 2011; UNEP,
2011), and possibly even more withering critiques of its defi-
ciencies (Brand, 2012; Morrow, 2012; Unm€
ußig et al., 2012;
Kenis and Lievens, 2015), less has been said about the
actors and institutions that could drive its widespread adop-
tion (Charnovitz, 2012 and Haas, 2012 are notable excep-
tions). States are obviously the key actors in governing
national economies, but they are both enabled and
constrained by global economic forces (e.g. trade and
investment flows) and global rules.
At present, global governance generally occurs in distinct
policy domains or ‘silos’much as it does in most national
contexts; the global environment and the global economy
are segregated. Within these domains, authority is highly
fragmented among numerous institutions (Biermann et al.,
2009). However, there are two institutions that have broad
scope and potentially the capacity to coordinate and steer
green economy efforts: the United Nations Environment Pro-
gramme (UNEP) was designed to set global standards and
coordinate UN-wide environmental activities; and the Group
of Twenty (G20) leaders summits have, since 2008, become
the main global forum for economic discussions.
UNEP has placed the green economy at the centre of its
work for the past eight years, but it has had little success in
translating its agenda into global action. Although UNEP
was able to get the green economy adopted as one of the
two major themes of the United Nations Conference on Sus-
tainable Development (UNCSD - popularly referred to as
‘Rio+20’), the meeting was widely considered a failure (Pat-
tberg and Mert, 2013).
When compared to the ‘Earth Summit’process, G20 sum-
mits have several advantages, the most obvious being that
they: are more frequent (at least once per year as opposed
Global Policy (2016) 7:4 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12344 ©2016 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Global Policy Volume 7 . Issue 4 . November 2016 481
Research Article
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