Green Industrial Policy: Concept, Policies, Country Experiences

The report is published as part of the Partnership for Action on Green Economy (PAGE)—an initiative by the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in partnership with the German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE).

The authors explore policy options for managing structural change that accounts for both the productivity and the environmental challenges in a harmonized way. «Green industrial policy» is used as a key concept here. The term «industrial policy» encompasses sets of measures that governments use to influence a country’s economic structure in the pursuit of a desired objective. The report aims to provide guidance to policymakers and practitioners as well as to contribute to the academic debate on green transformation strategies.

The report has four parts. Part 1 discusses the conceptual foundations of green industrial policy. Part 2 shows that green industrial policy may bring a number of economic and social co-benefits, in addition to environmental improvements. Part 3 discusses some of the key policies that help to implement the green transformation. Part 4 examines the practical implementation of key policies in four countries at different levels of income and technological capacity: Morocco, China, Brazil and Germany.

Overall, the report provides a comprehensive overview of the rationale for environmental transformation, of the synergies and potential tradeoffs among social, economic and environmental objectives and of different policy approaches and experiences of practical implementation in a wide range of country contexts. The authors hope that the report helps analysts and practitioners to accelerate the green transformation in a way that harmonizes societal objectives in the spirit of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.