Policy Strategies

Until recently, the conventional environmental management approach just focused on improving environmental performance by controlling and regulating pollution and effluents from production processes. Despite the progress achieved, pollution control alone does not provide for lessening the pressures from the current pattern of economic growth. Nor does it promote “development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” In order to “ensure the environmental sustainability” of the society, it is imperative to also improve the efficiency of the way natural resources are being used.

Regulation is necessary to ensure some improvement in eco-efficiency, essentially with regard to pollution prevention and control. This can be done through extended producer responsibility, recycling targets, landfill and other waste directives, and voluntary agreements. One very effective tool to influence production facilities especially in the private sector to be eco-efficient and reduce their pollution is through public information disclosure.

There are a number of ways in which such policy incentives can be implemented. Thus, in view of the rapidly increasing volume of consumption in Asia and the Pacific region, addressing eco-efficiency of the consumption pattern is imperative for maintaining the environmental sustainability on regional and global levels.

This is where the Green Growth policy incentive comes into play. It seeks to harmonize economic growth for poverty reduction and improved well-being with environmental sustainability, while improving the eco-efficiency of economic growth and enhancing the synergy between environment and economy. To improve the eco-efficiency of the economic growth, there is a need to improve the eco-efficiency of the production and consumption patterns of society.

The public sector’s role is to create sustainable consumption choices, which the private sector has not made available to consumers. Linking sustainable consumption to transport proved relevant to the experiences of countries. The important role of cultural values and traditional lifestyles in promoting sustainable consumption choices for a resource saving society are also important.

Government could influence consumption patterns both by raising revenue (taxation) and by spending revenue (budget expenditure). While “green” purchasing has been the focus of recent policy developments, the role of public investment in development of infrastructure for sustainable consumption choices, such as public transportation, including railroads for example, has been little discussed. Taxation is also a powerful tool in improving eco-efficiency of consumption patterns.

The Co-benefits Approach to Climate Change and Development

The co-benefits approach to climate change mitigation action seeks to unite climate action with existing development strategies. For many developing countries across the region climate change efforts can be constrained by existing development priorities or by financial constraints. Thus, the co-benefits approach aspires to achieve tangible economic and social developments, such as poverty alleviation while simultaneously reducing GHG emissions leading to "no regret" actions by countries. It is also considered to be a practical approach for developed countries to cooperate with developing countries on climate change issues, where economic and social development is a priority at the national and local levels13.

The co-benefits approach is achieved by the introduction of integrated policies and measures into development planning to plan for GHG emission reduction efforts. These co-benefits can be realized in a number of important sectors, including manufacturing, energy, pollution abatement and rural development and have proven particularly successful when engaging policy makers in these areas.

In 2006, the Ministry of the Environment, Japan (MOEJ) and the Overseas Environmental Cooperation Center, Japan (OECC) jointly launched an initiative on the "Co-benefits Approach called the Oriented Efforts to Address Climate Change and CDM. These recent efforts to promote the co-benefits approach in pollution abatement, such as improvements in local air quality have been highlighted by the Japanese government particularly because of the damages to health caused by economic activities in the region. To promote the co-benefits approach more effectively, in addition to the project based approaches of CDM, co-benefits need to be regarded at the earliest stages of program design and policy formulation in developing countries. In addition, it would be beneficial to climate action if official development assistance (ODA), CDM projects and other financial mechanisms took the co-benefits approach into consideration when instigating future development planning. Dialogues between climate authorities and development agencies should incorporate the co-benefits approach to help build capacity in developing countries across the Asia and Pacific region.

Framework for Implementing Green Growth: Integrated Sustainability Assessments

There exist a wide variety of instruments available for evaluating the overall implications policies have for sustainable development. These include, for example, Environmental Impact Assessment, Regulatory Impact Assessment, Sustainability Impact Assessment, and the EU regime of Impact Assessment. While these tools have been very useful in assessing individual policies, they have yet to provide much assistance in mapping out a sustainable, holistic, development strategy. The Integrated Sustainability Assessment (ISA) works to this end.

According to the Methods and Tools for Integrated Sustainability Assessment (MATISSE) Project, “ISA is a cyclical, participatory process of scoping, envisioning, experimenting, and learning through which a shared interpretation of sustainability for a specific context is developed and applied in an integrated manner in order to explore solutions to persistent problems of unsustainable development.”

ISA can serve as an indispensible instrument for governments and policy makers seeking to effectively undertake and coordinate complimentary policies in an effort to foster green growth.

ISA underscores four major stages that are often continuous and overlapping.

1. Scoping stage:
A key objective of this stage is to attempt to clearly identify, define, and understand any pressing problems that are contributing to unsustainability, for instance, natural resource depletion, issues of chronic unemployment, and poor economic performance. Recognizing the root causes of these problems, such as incorrect price signals from perverse subsidies or lax command and control, is also important. At the same time stakeholders must also be identified and engaged, and a consensus based on country-specific problems must be framed and agreed upon. Collecting sound data on the problems and their impact on relevant stakeholders will be an important asset for the future when attempting to garner public support for reform. After the ISA cycle has been completed once, the problems must be reformulated and stakeholders again identified to fit within the new context. 

2. Envisioning stage:
Moving into this stage first involves envisioning among stakeholders what green growth and sustainability would resemble in their own country context. Indentifying the vision of and challenges to sustainability and green growth will require the use of various participatory assessments. In line with the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA), the concerns of vulnerable (including the poor) men and women in particular, should be included. Based on this consensus, the envisioning stage entails designing a long-term, holistic strategy to achieve green growth and sustainability. GTBR and other non-MBI complimentary instruments (e.g. eco-labeling), as well as the proper sequencing of these policies, should be examined. This vision should contain multiple pathways including both a “business as usual” and green growth scenarios. Short-term policy proposals should strike a balance between cost-effectiveness, equity, and political feasibility. However, considerations of cost-effectiveness should only be focused on in the short-term, as it will not be relevant for long-term strategies ranging from 25-50 years. This strategy might be effectively articulated in a Map to Green Growth that could be referenced and disseminated during windows of political opportunity. Wide-reaching public education and awareness campaigns on the persistent problems facing the achievement of sustainability, and the subsequent reasons for and benefits of adopting GTBR, for example, can greatly enhance political support. 

3. Experimental stage:
This stage focuses on utilizing ISA tools to analyze the feasibility, consistency, and adequacy of the vision of sustainability, in particular the drivers of various possible trajectories (pathways) of development. Stakeholder input should be a criterion for determining which tools would be the most appropriate. Nonetheless, a combination of both qualitative processes and quantitative tools (e.g. models of systems and subsystems) would be ideal. The quantitative component is especially important for assessing eco-systems, as well as tax and subsidy incidence on the poor.

4. Learning stage:
Formulating “lessons learned” from previous monitoring and evaluation activities is crucial for readjusting and fine-tuning visions for sustainability. These will feed into the first stage (scoping stage) of the next ISA cycle. It is also important to underline whether or not the policies achieved their intended goals and objectives in transitioning to a more sustainable pathway of development. They may have caused unintended consequences that must now also be addressed. Widely presenting information on the results of GTBR— such as the amount of revenue mobilized or improvements to environmental quality— is a method for maintaining long-term support for this process.