Hello Eco-Warriors I hope you are doing well and making change in your society and encouraging people to make ecologically safe choices. Today I am going to talk about a topic which I recently came across in the Youth Environment Assembly by UNEP MGCY which I attended as an environment activist. The interesting topic that I am going to talk about it Green Economy some of you might have heard of it whilst it may sound like a new and unfamiliar term to others. 

Let’s start by defining Green Economy. According to the United Nations Environment Programme green economy ‘is a low carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive. In a green economy, growth in employment and income are driven by public and private investment into such economic activities, infrastructure and assets that allow reduced carbon emissions and pollution, enhanced energy and resource efficiency, and prevention of the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services.These green investments need to be enabled and supported through targeted public expenditure, policy reforms and changes in taxation and regulation.’

Green economy in simpler words means that an economy that was made to sustainable consumption and development. An economy that supports low carbon consumption and is conserving in nature. The idea of green economy was mainly built to support a world that had lesser predicaments as compared to the present economies in terms of an environmental aspect I.e. it wants economies to function in Eco-friendly ways. 

Now let’s discuss what are the key principles of green economy. Whilst learning about the green economy I came to know that it’s governed by a certain set of principles and that intrigued me to further question what those were. Green Economy follows a set of principles which  are further segregated into three types namely economic, social and most importantly environmental and here are some of them in detail. According to the UN DESA- 

1)recognising natural capital and values 

2)Promotes resource and energy efficiency 

3)Creates decent work and green jobs 

4)Protects biodiversity and ecosystems 

5)Invests in and sustains natural capital 

6)It should be socially inclusive 

7)It is equitable and fair 

8)Recognises ecological limits 

Now let’s talk about some notable initiatives taken by countries regarding green economy. 

• Renewable energy in China.
• Feed-in tariffs in Kenya.
• Organic agriculture in Uganda.
• Sustainable urban planning in Brazil.
• Rural ecological infrastructure in India.
• Forest management in Nepal.
• Ecosystem services in Ecuador.
• Solar energy in Tunisia

These others depict how countries are eager to adopt the fundamentals of a green economy and while some adopted pilot projects another implemented policies to help strengthen the idea of green economy.

Green Economy also contains in it various jobs some of which we might all know about as we talked about those jobs in our environmental jobs report. Green economy jobs according to the century foundation are ‘jobs in businesses that produce goods or provide services that benefit the environment or conserve natural resources; or jobs in which workers' duties involve making their establishment's production processes more environmentally friendly or use fewer natural resources’ but here I am listing below some jobs that some of you might find interesting and might even propel you to take these up in the future.

• Sustainability specialists
• Environmental management
• Power plant operation
• Construction inspection
• Soil and Plant Scientists
• Solar Photovoltaic Installers
• Sustainability Coordinator
• Water Resource Engineer
• Wind Turbine Technician
• Sustainability Director
• Sustainability Analyst
• Natural Resources Specialist

I hope this article gave you some insight as to what and how the green economy is and why it started and what are its purposes. Now, after you have read the article I would be really interested in learning some key takeaways from all of you. Let me know what you all think. Quoted- ledsgp.org,tcf.org,United Nations Environment Programme

Green Cheers,

Anoushka