Constructing the green economy: integrating sustainability for governance?

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According to UNEP (2011: 14) 'disillusionment with our prevailing economic paradigm' has led to the green economy entering public policy discourses at multiple governance levels, a concept that necessitates 'an alternative paradigm in which increased wealth does not lead to growing environmental risks, ecological scarcities and social disparities'. Much of this disillusionment results from threats posed by climate change, biodiversity loss and unsustainable consumption which are set to intensify in future, providing challenges to existing socio-economic systems. Greening economies to more fully integrate environmental concerns will therefore involve major transformations in current governance structures to reorient markets, shift consumption patterns and redistribute resources to enhance environmental protection and social well-being, a factor recognised in recent global initiatives such as the United Nations' global Green New Deal and Green Economy programmes (UNEP 2009, 2011). Within the European Union, facilitating green/low carbon economic growth is now a strategic priority in the 2010 Lisbon Strategy (Lisbon 2020) for jobs and competitiveness (CEC 2010). In addition, the green economy is a strategic theme in the upcoming UN Rio+20 Conference on sustainable development in 2012, ensuring it remains at the forefront of future governance priorities. However, the green economy remains a somewhat nebulous and potentially contested concept, in need of further empirical and theoretical explication in order to provide normative policy strategies. For some environmentalists the green economy remains controversial since it appears to downgrade long term sustainability issues in favour of economic concerns, while endorsing a techno-centric development view (Jackson 2009). This is a critical issue we seek to examine in the research seminar series.In this respect, the seminar series aims to build on the existing investigations of the applicants into green budgeting (e.g. Russel and Benson 2011; O'Riordan 2011) and others, to generate further empirical, theoretical and normative research into how the green economy concept is being framed and integrated in EU states. The seminar series also seeks to stimulate debate and provide tentative policy relevant recommendations on potential governance solutions. Several auditable objectives are central to this aim. Firstly, the seminar programme will establish an international network of scholars and policy-makers to generate and share research on the green economy. Secondly, the programme will involve multiple academic and non-academic partners in this process. Thirdly, the organisers will disseminate research outputs via more traditional publication outputs and to partners through a feedback session and policy note. Fourthly, the seminars will stimulate active dialogues with local, national and international policy communities in order to more widely disseminate findings and generate policy relevant recommendations to facilitate future governance. Finally, the research will promote the international profile of the ESRC and participant organisations.Two of the major strengths of the research programme consequently will be its originality and relevance. In view of the former, the issue of the green economy is relatively new, academically novel and is an emerging high-profile global policy agenda. Its cross-cutting nature, moreover, necessitates new ways of working across traditional academic boundaries. The research seminars will therefore address significant gaps in knowledge through generating new resarch and cross-disciplinary comparative insights. In view of the latter, the series will directly input into emerging policy discussions at local, regional, national, EU and global levels via the various partner organisations identified in the application (see 'Case for Support'). The research will be particularly timely in respect of the upcoming Rio+20 event in 2012.