The evolution of green growth policy: an unwelcome intrusion in global environmental governance?

The notion of green growth emerged in 2009. Since then, policy makers and practitioners have largely adopted the term. Although rather intermittently, there have been academic observations on green growth, with the term often being cited as a paradigm and a policy guide for generating new sources of growth. The most important reasons for the surge in green growth today as a new trend and an international agenda item are the rather unsatisfactory results and pitfalls of sustainable development, which has failed at promoting a tangible international environmental principle or a concrete policy framework. Green growth has been proposed as an alternative simultaneously to foster the dynamics of global environmental governance and to reinvigorate the world economy. This study examines to what extent green growth plays a complementary role in existing global environmental governance. Available evidence provides reasonable grounds for arguing that a positive outcome may well be expected from the evolution of green growth architecture and followed by practical policies. It became a global agenda out of a few influential national governments’ control. However, decision makers in the leading countries, both developed and developing must be willing to continue implementing what has been discussed and agreed thus far, beyond changes in political leadership and administrations.