Global Commissioner Carlos Lopes explains how Africa can avoid the polluting stage of industrialisation, and go straight to low carbon prosperity
Fostering entrepreneurship, including green entrepreneurship, is a key policy aim for African countries, says Milan Brahmbhatt.
Policies that encourage sustainable growth and entrepreneurship have the potential to ignite a green industrial revolution in Africa. Transformative economic and ‘green growth’ policies, combined with entrepreneurship, could enable Africa to ‘leap frog’ to a clean, resource-efficient modern economy.
Urbanisation is one of the most important potential drivers of productivity and growth in the global economy. But if countries and cities are to capture the productivity benefits of urban growth while minimising the costs, cities will need to shift to a more economically and environmentally sustainable growth pattern.
Cities that are designed and managed well – where people have plentiful options to move around without cars or do not have to go far to get work done – are powerful drivers of growth, creating good jobs and making them attractive places to live, says Lord Nicholas Stern.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala writes that an international effort is under way to encourage countries to remove policies that may contradict their otherwise sincere efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
Most developed countries now pursue policies that implicitly or explicitly aim at promoting compact urban form. This report analyses more than 300 academic papers that study the effects of compact urban form, and finds that 69% of the papers reviewed find positive effects associated with compact urban form. Over 70% of studies find positive effects of economic density (the number of people living or working in an area). A smaller majority of studies attribute positive effects to mixed land use (58%) and the density of the built environment (56%).
There’s ample evidence that renewable energy and energy efficiency are booming sectors for business, writes Naina Lal Kidwai in the Financial Times.
Tanzania has the sixth highest rate of urban population growth in the world, but so far it has been largely informal and unmanaged. This paper offers recommendations for managing Tanzania’s urban growth at the country level.
In Africa, the new climate economy of the future will bring benefits ranging from jobs in clean energy to improved air quality and more productive land, writes Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in the Financial Times.