Programmes and Cooperation

The world is faced with two epoch-defining issues - persistent poverty and environmental degradation, which are the inevitable consequences of adopting a lopsided economic system. In addition, there is growing international concern over the economic roots of environmental destruction and their costs, such as climate change, loss of species and the destruction of ecosystems.

There is need for a change to green economy, which can offer creative solutions to multiple global challenges by linking people, planet and prosperity. The Green Economy Coalition brings together environment, development, trade union, consumer and business sectors, North and South towards the common cause: transition to a green economy that provides a better quality of life for all within the ecological limits of one planet.

• to mobilise and build a global coalition of organisations from different sectors for a green and inclusive economy
• to provide a platform for debate on green economy issues ensuring that multi-sector perspectives and voices from the South are integrated into discussions
• to organise and share knowledge on the green economy
• to identify priority issues and strategic opportunities to influence the transition to a green economy
• to help build consensus on priority issues, and to jointly communicate policy messages to key audiences and in strategic forums.

In 2009 the Green Economy Coalition began its work to engage public perceptions of a green economy. It identified the conditions enabling the transition, and sent three high-level communiqués to G20 heads of state and finance ministers urging them to invest in a clean, green and equitable economy for the 21st century.

These activities, which will help to firm up the Coalition’s objectives, are just the start. In 2010, the GEC will convene a number of regional dialogues, bring together good evidence on best practice and on poor practice that must be halted, and produce authoritative policy recommendations.

The partners of the coalition are Consumers International, Inspire Foundation for Business and Society, International Trade Union Confederation, WWF International, International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Global Reporting Initiative, Ecologic Institute, Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD, Bellagio Forum for Sustainable Development, IISD-Europe, Centre for Human Ecology, UN Environment Programme’s Green Economy Initiative, and International Institute for Environment and Development