The paper highlights the importance of the social element of sustainable development, through the concept of equity, and proposes the concept of “equitable green economy” for achieving sustainable development.
It also provides five working principles of this concept, together with an example framework adopting the five principles.
June 2012: The Danish 92 Group – Forum for Sustainable Development has produced a paper titled “Building an Equitable Green Economy,” which highlights the need to address all three elements of sustainable development, and proposes the concept of an equitable green economy for achieving sustainable development.
The paper was prepared by a group of developing country experts, who note that the “green economy” concept only includes the environment and economy elements of sustainable development, and underline the need to also include the social element through the concept of equity.
The paper proposes five working principles for achieving progress toward an “equitable green economy,” as follows: creating a package of prerequisites to trigger appropriate strategy and action on key ambitions; ensuring that the necessary means for action are available; having appropriately mandated institutions functioning and cooperating across various, interconnected levels; ensuring that all involved and affected actors engage, with the required levels of transparency, accountability, and participation; and defining a clear process with timelines, indicators, assessment and learning.
Using these five principles, the paper provides a sample framework of an equitable green economy, showing how this concept can be used to achieve equity and sustainable development.
The Danish 92 Group is an coalition of Danish NGOs working on environment and development. [Project Webpage] [Publication: Building an Equitable Green Economy]