The Inclusive Green Economy

Image: David de la Iglesia Villar

As defined by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Inclusive Green Economy is "one that improves human well-being and generates social equity while reducing environmental risks and scarcity. An inclusive green economy is an alternative to today's dominant economic model, which exacerbates inequalities, encourages waste, triggers resource scarcity and generates widespread threats to the environment and human health".

The concept of Inclusive Green Economy is an evolution of earlier Green Economy work developed by the UN, which applied government obligations on companies to reduce CO2 emissions or to adapt their products to environmental regulations. This way of conditioning companies to comply with "green" legislation meant, in some cases, an increase in the cost of products that had to be borne by the consumer, due to the heavy investments that companies had to make to comply with the regulations, which is why it was harshly criticised by the defenders of other economic models, such as circular ones. That is why the UN expanded the term in 2015, and included the inclusive green economy as "an alternative to the currently dominant economic model, which generates widespread environmental and health risks, encourages wasteful consumption and production, drives ecological and resource scarcity, and results in inequality".

With this new approach to the green economy, UNEP bridges the gap with the circular models promoted by the blue economy, and puts forward a range of economic, health, safety, social and environmental benefits and is based, fundamentally, on:

• low carbon emissions

• efficient and clean production

• consumption- and output-sensitive activities

• exchange, circularity, collaboration, solidarity, resilience, opportunity and interdependence

• broadened options for national economies through targeted fiscal and social protection policies.
  

The aim of this economic model, according to the UN, is to offer humanity as a whole a better future, creating the conditions for greater prosperity for people in a context marked by social equity, as well as:

• providing jobs and income

• improving health

• improving the environment

The inclusive green economy is part of the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as a fundamental means of achieving poverty eradication and safeguarding "the ecological thresholds that underpin human health, well-being and development".

Sources: https://www.unep.org/es/node/19231. Taken: 26/06/2021. Author´s translations.

Fátima Gordillo