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Driving for economic recovery in an environmentally challenged world, optimizing resource efficiency while maintaining biodiversity and dealing with energy, climate and water issues dominate the global policy agenda. These trends show that our global existing models of production and consumption need rethinking.
The financial and economic crisis has exacerbated these challenges and increased the urgency for a sustainability transition.
A “Green Economy transition” was called for last year by the OECD, UNEP and a number of national parliaments. The EU launched its “GDP and Beyond" communication in September 2009 and the EU 2020 Vision for Sustainable Growth in March 2010. The “Stiglitz Report” has underlined the need for new ways of measuring prosperity and economic development by going “beyond GDP”. Policymakers are exploring both voluntary and regulatory instruments for a greener, more eco-efficient and low-carbon economy.
So how can business and policy maker’s work together to learn how to live within a finite planet? What are the implications for economic policies and what is the role of regulation? What does “growing within limits” mean for policy making, for the market economy and the corporate sector? |