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01. Introduction
Through its Green Growth Performance Measurement (GGPM) Program, the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) has developed the first benchmarked Green Growth Index that provides policymakers with a metric to measure green growth performance and on which to base their decisions.
This report discusses the conceptual and methodological frameworks of the Green Growth Index, the process for developing these frameworks, and the rationale for pursuing an inclusive and collaborative process. It also presents key results highlighting differences in green growth performance across dimensions and top-ranking countries in different regions.
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02. Key Purpose, Issues and Findings
Green Growth Index measures country performance in achieving sustainability targets including Sustainable Development Goals, Paris Climate Agreement, and Aichi Biodiversity Targets for four green growth dimensions – efficient and sustainable resource use, natural capital protection, green economic opportunities and social inclusion.
Less than 25% of the 115 countries ranked in the Index are close to reaching sustainability targets for green growth. With half of the countries performing only moderately and more than 25% scoring low on the Green Growth Index, much more effort is needed to build a “greener” world. Actions are most critical for green economic opportunities where performance is lowest globally.
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03. Design Process
GGGI’s Green Growth Index pioneered an inclusive and rigorous process that is concept-driven, expert-guided, and policy-relevant.
More than 300 experts representing different organizations from various regions around the world participated in the review of the green growth framework for the Index. Expert feedback was assessed through iterative steps during three phases of Index development since 2017. This feedback was collected through workshops, expert group meetings, consultations, and an online survey.
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04. Conceptual Framework
The interlinkages among the four dimensions of the Green Growth Index build on the concepts of low carbon economy, ecosystem health, inclusive growth and resilient society. The conceptual framework for the Green Growth Index builds on the GGGI’s definition of green growth.
“Green growth is a development approach that seeks to deliver economic growth that is both environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive. It seeks opportunities for economic growth that are low-carbon and climate resilient, prevent or remediate pollution, maintain healthy and productive ecosystems, and create green jobs, reduce poverty and enhance social inclusion.”
Twenty-one indicators of the Green Growth Index are directly derived from the SDGs. The remaining fifteen, while not SDGs indicators, contribute to achieving the SDGs, the Paris Agreement on Climate, and Aichi targets. The Index is the first to benchmark green growth performance against the targets of these international agreements.
Methodology
Methodology
A stepwise approach was applied on the Green Growth Index to enhance its transparency, replicability, and credibility.
The approach conforms to “good practices” in developing composite index, following the rigorous steps of concept building, empirical analysis and validation, and score presentation. Sustainability targets are integrated in the rescaling methods, allowing the Green Growth Index to measure distance to targets.
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Green Growth Index rankings are provided for countries within five geographic regions — Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania.
This report also provides an in-depth discussion on the scores related to resource efficiency, natural capital protection, green economic opportunities, and social inclusion for subregions as well as top country performers. Finally, it explains why some countries turned out to show exceptional performance on specific green growth dimension.
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6.1 Green Growth dimensions by regions
Europe performs significantly better than the rest of the regions in social inclusion, with an overall score of 80. The largest discrepancies in scores are evident for this dimension, with Africa scoring the lowest, with below 40. The regional scores for natural capital protection are relatively close, at around 60, with only Asia scoring below 60. Oceania slightly performs better than Europe in efficient and sustainable resource use. The scores for African and American regions are at par at 40, which are significantly lower than for Oceania and Europe. The lowest performing region for this dimension is Asia. Only Europe performs relatively well in green economic opportunities, albeit the score is still low, at 40.
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6.2 Top Country Performance
Out of the 23 countries scoring high in the 2019 Green Growth Index, Denmark and Sweden rank highest, both with scores of about 75. But these top scores are still 25 points from the green growth target of 100. Top ranks in other regions include Singapore in Asia, the Dominican Republic in the Americas, New Zealand in Oceania, and Botswana in Africa, all achieving moderate scores. Like in Europe, top ranks in the Americas and Africa are highly challenged by countries next in line. In contrast, Singapore and New Zealand firmly secure top ranks in their respective regions, at least 2 points ahead of other countries.
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6.3 Exceptional country performance
The results of the subindex for efficient and sustainable resource use have shown few exceptional performances for the region in Africa. Countries such as Chad, the Congo Republic, and Gabon have high to very high scores for this dimension. Their scores are higher than those for Denmark, which is the top-ranking country with the highest global score in the Green Growth Index. These three African countries perform better than Denmark in most of the indicators for efficient and sustainable resource..
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Additional policy-relevant indicators for green growth have been identified, but many of these cannot yet be integrated into the current framework due to the absence of satisfactory data. The index also includes many SDG indicators, allowing the use of measurable sustainability targets, even though some indicators still lack commonly agreed global targets, particularly those related to the Paris Agreement.
GGGI intends to further develop and improve the Green Growth Index in years to come. This can be done by leveraging the efforts of various international organizations to improve the indicators, targets, and underlying data for the SDGs; the work of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) to increase knowledge and data on biodiversity; and the ambitions of governments to develop Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement.
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08. Comparison with other Green Growth Indices
Few other green growth related indices exist. It is thus important to understand similarities and differences between major global and regional green growth concepts through a comparative analysis of the frameworks and design process.
The green growth frameworks of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), African Development Bank (AfDB), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and Dual Citizen LLC (DC) were considered for the comparative assessments with the Green Growth Index. ADB’s concept was designed to develop a regional green growth index and measure green growth performance of developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region, but it can be applied to all countries and regional settings and for all levels of development. AfDB’s concept of green growth was piloted to support its 2013- 2022 strategy, which focuses on inclusive growth and the transition to green growth across Africa. DC’s concept of green economy was also applied in a global index that is updated every two years. UNEP’s concept was developed to measure green economy progress at the global level, using both an index and a dashboard of sustainability indicators.
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As part of GGGI’s knowledge products, the Green Growth Index helps foster collaboration with international organizations that advocate the green model of economic growth.
GGGI presently collaborates with the African Development Bank (AfDB) to apply the Index to the African socio-economic and institutional contexts and with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to link green growth baseline performance to scenarios of progress. In 2020, GGGI plans to pilot the Green Growth Index-related “Policy Simulation Tool” that will serve to explore ways and means by which governments can consider the implications of taking certain policy and investment actions with the goal of improving their green growth performance.
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Appendix 1 Statistical Tables
Statistical tables of Green Growth Index, dimensions, indicator categories, and indicators
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Appendix 3
Correlation of indicators in each green growth dimension
