ABSTRACT
The ‘green economy’ became a high-profile idea when promoted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in preparing the 2012 Rio+20 Earth Summit. UNEP began to promote Green Economy in 2008, initially as a Global Green New Deal. Yet UNEP soon abandoned its early version, instead favouring market instruments and public-private partnerships. Greater resource-efficiency in production methods is meant to achieve sustainable growth. There are doubts about whether green investment truly replaces brown economy or instead supplements it. A replacement process cannot be achieved or incentivised simply by financial instruments. The outcome will depend on the interplay of political forces which define ‘green’ and ‘economy’ in practice.
