Page 272 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 1

STS429 Margarita R.

Green economy: A conceptual overview
Margarita Rohr
University of Valencia, Spain

Abstract
The United Nations system has identified green economy as “investment in
sectors such as energy efficiency technologies, renewable energy, public
transport, sustainable agriculture, environment friendly tourism and
sustainable management of natural resources, including ecosystems and
biodiversity” aimed at generating new areas of production, quality jobs and
an increase in income, while serving to mitigate climate change and protect
biodiversity.
A greener economy, as a way to achieve sustainable development, is not
optional for sustainable enterprises and labour markets, it is a necessity.
Escalating natural resource use and pollution will compound the growing
scarcity of fresh water and fertile land and accelerate the loss of biodiversity
and climate change beyond tolerable – perhaps even manageable – levels. The
overuse of natural resources, such as forests, fish and clean water, and the
rising levels of pollution, including emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), are
increasingly exceeding planetary boundaries.
In order to understand the nature of green jobs, it is important to understand
the environment in which these jobs are being created. It is also true in the
case of tourism industries where such jobs should be part of the green tourism
economy. Many national and international users are interested in the size of
the green economy (in terms of the number of establishments, the number of
employees and the total turnover) and in its contribution to economic growth,
especially to turnover, employment (number of people employed directly or
indirectly, their level of skills and the specialist skills required), value added,
investment, exports, etc.
The green economy paradigm is used in this paper both as background and a
general framework of discussion.

Keywords
Green economy; Green growth; Sustainable development

1. Introduction
The existing model of economy has allowed a great growth of the world
economy and that today millions of people enjoy high levels of wellbeing. Only
in the last quarter of a century, the world economy has quadrupled, benefiting

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