Creating opportunity for safe environment and economy

'Green growth' offers real opportunities for more inclusive growth in developing countries like Bangladesh while protecting environment. However, the concept is generating a great diversity of political positions, from enthusiastic to cautious, reflecting a lack of clarity and experience. It is high time to explore how green growth strategies can be applied, taking into account the differences in natural resource endowments, levels of socio-economic development, sources of economic growth and institutional capacity.
Green growth means fostering economic growth and development while making sure that natural assets continue to provide the resources and environmental services on which our well-being relies. To do this, it must catalyse investment and innovation in order to underpin sustained growth and new economic opportunities.
The most serious problems facing the world today are - water and food supply crises, extreme volatility in energy and food prices, rising greenhouse gas emissions, severe income disparity, chronic fiscal imbalances and terrorism (World Economic Forum, 2012). These  either stem from environmental mismanagement or inequality or both. Aside from the chronic fiscal imbalances that mostly concern the developed economies, developing countries like Bangladesh are most vulnerable to all of these risks. The key question is-how environmental goals can be reconciled with growth and poverty reduction in Bangladesh. These goals can indeed be pursued simultaneously while going for green and inclusive growth.
Green production is the key to achieving green growth. Although today most developing countries like Bangladesh make only a small contribution to the global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, their emissions will increase, if they follow the same path to economic growth as the developed countries had done.
Green growth has the potential to address economic and environmental challenges and open up new sources of growth through the following channels:
PRODUCTIVITY: Incentives for greater efficiency in the use of resources and natural assets: enhancing productivity, reducing waste and energy consumption and making resources available to highest value use.
INNOVATION: Opportunities for innovation, spurred by policies and framework conditions that allow for new ways of addressing environmental problems.
NEW MARKETS: Creation of new markets by stimulating demand for green technologies, goods, and services; creating potential for new job opportunities.
CONFIDENCE: Boosting investor confidence through greater predictability and stability on how governments are going to deal with major environmental issues.
STABILITY: More balanced macroeconomic conditions, reduced resource price volatility and supporting fiscal consolidation through, for instance, reviewing the composition and efficiency of public spending and increasing revenues through the pricing of pollution. It can also reduce risks of negative shocks to growth.

Let us discuss why green growth is important for developing countries like Bangladesh. If we continue a "business as usual" approach to meeting the rising global demand for food, energy and infrastructure, the world will exceed its ecological carrying capacity. Volatile commodity prices, uncontrollable pollution, severe damage to human health and irreversible loss of biodiversity systems will be the consequence of these business-as-usual investment decisions.
The overarching goal of green growth is to establish incentives or institutions that increase well-being by: improving resource management so as to boost productivity; encouraging economic activity to take place where it is of best advantage to society over the long-term; finding new ways of meeting the above two objectives, i.e., innovation; recognising the full value of natural capital as a factor of production along with other commodities and services.
Greening the growth path of an economy depends on its growth framework and institutional settings, level of development, resource endowments and particular environmental pressure points. Policy action requires looking across a very wide range of strategies. Matching green growth policies and poverty reduction objectives will be important for adapting this framework to emerging and developing countries. There are important complementarities between green growth and poverty reduction, which can help to drive progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These include:  more efficient water, energy and transport infrastructure; alleviating poor health associated with environmental degradation; and introducing efficient technologies that can reduce costs and increase productivity, while easing environmental pressure.
Increasingly developing Green production is a potential source of economic growth, but accompanied by growing emissions and more intensive use of natural resources. The potential economic and social impacts of environmental degradation are particularly serious for developing countries given their dependence on natural resources for economic growth and their vulnerability to energy, food, water security, climate change and extreme weather risks. All these factors are challenging their ability to develop.
Bangladesh has the greatest opportunities for capitalising on the synergies between environmental and economic sustainability. A green growth approach offers the opportunity for emerging and developing economies to leapfrog unsustainable and wasteful production and consumption patterns. They can still factor environmental issues into their infrastructure investment decisions and can further develop agriculture and other natural resources in a way that improves livelihoods, creates jobs and reduces poverty. They are less constrained than developed countries, which are now locked into investment choices and sunk capital from previous decades. Adequate financing and capacity would offer developing economies the opportunity to lay down the infrastructure and networks needed to support a sustainable development path.
Co-operation between the OECD and developing countries is essential in efforts to move towards global green growth. This requirement is clearly recognised in the GGS. But there is no "one-size-fits-all" prescription for implementing a green growth strategy. National development strategies must be based on each country's strengths, bottlenecks and constraints (OECD, 2012). Developed, emerging, and developing countries will face different challenges and opportunities in greening growth, as will countries with differing economic and political circumstances (OECD, 2011). Yet, there are some common considerations that apply to all contexts. Greening the growth path of an economy depends on the institutional settings, level of development, resource endowments and particular environmental pressure points.
GREEN GROWTH AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: Sustainable development provides an important context for green growth. Green growth has not been conceived as a replacement for sustainable development, but rather should be considered as a means to achieve it (OECD, 2011b). It is narrower in scope, entailing an operational policy agenda that can help achieve concrete, measurable progress at the interface of the economy and the environment. It provides a strong focus on fostering the necessary conditions for innovation, investment and competition that can give rise to new sources of economic growth, consistent with resilient ecosystems.

The goal for many developing economies is to achieve diversified and sustainable growth over time, which leads to poverty reduction, increased well-being and major improvements in the quality of life of its citizens. This is achieved by taking into account the full value of natural capital and recognising its essential role in economic growth. A green growth model promotes a cost-effective and resource-efficient way of guiding sustainable production and consumption choices. Put simply, green growth will help developing countries to achieve sustainable development.
GREEN GROWTH BENEFITS FOR BANGLADESH: Many developing countries face different and more difficult policy choices than developed countries in defining and implementing green growth strategies. Choosing not to bring more land under cultivation because of the high environmental costs will be difficult for a country with high levels of rural poverty.
Though, options for increasing the productivity of existing cultivable land should be explored. Evidently, systems to pay poor countries for ecosystem services and increase the economic and welfare benefit accruing to them and their citizens from maintaining environmental assets will be critical for the political feasibility of green growth strategies. Studies have found that green growth activities can offer both short term and longer term benefits and opportunities to developing countries.
The short-term benefits can become more visible if appropriate and targeted social complementary policies are implemented hand in hand with green growth measures. But what can be the long term benefits? Some of the potential benefits from Green growth are as follows:
ECONOMIC BENEFITS
l Increased GDP - from green goods and services
l Increased revenue from pricing ecosystem services (or their reduction prevented)
l Economic diversification, i.e., improved management of economic risks and reduced vulnerability
l Innovation, access and uptake of green technologies, i.e., improved market confidence
ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFITS
l Increased productivity and efficiency of natural resource use
l Natural capital used within ecological limits
l Reduced environmental impact and improved natural hazard/risk management
SOCIAL BENEFITS
l Increased livelihood opportunities, income and/or quality of life, notably of the poor
l Decent jobs that benefit poor people
l Enhanced social, human and knowledge capital
l Reduced inequality
In comparison, many low-income countries are cautious about the concept and are only just beginning to assess the opportunities, threats and indeed meaning of a green economic pathway. However, the policy ideas and technologies are neither easily accessible nor entirely relevant to their national developmental needs. Questions have also been raised about the significance of green growth for meeting the economic development and poverty reduction objectives of many developing countries, in particular with regard to the potential welfare gains from preserving natural capital and opportunity costs of foregone economic development.
The writer is Assistant
Secretary, BKMEA.
rajonbkmea@gmail.com