The German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), Green Growth Knowledge Platform (GGKP) and Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) are organizing an International Research and Policy Conference on Green transformation and competitive advantage.
Developing country governments are increasingly committing to greening their economies, most explicitly under the Paris Agreement on climate change, where nearly all governments agreed to establish national road maps for decarbonization. Many also have enacted comprehensive national green growth strategies. Yet, there are concerns that poorer countries do not have the financial and institutional means to internalize environmental costs, and that their economies are mostly factor-driven, hence internalizing environmental costs may undermine their competitive advantages vis-a-vis innovation-driven economies. For these reasons, many analysts and policymakers favor a “grow first and clean up later” strategy. This conference seeks to challenge this strategy through a better understanding of the economic co-benefits and costs of green transformations.