Helping countries leapfrog to a green economy

Helping countries leapfrog to a green economy

Geographical scope: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.
Time frame: Ongoing
Priority area: Resource efficiency
Partners: The UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the UN Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Union and World Bank.
Donors: The project is mainly financed by the European Union, with contributions from the UN Development Account and the Norwegian Trust Fund.
Contribution to Sustainable Development Goals: Goal 8 on Decent work and Economic Growth, Goal 9 on Resilient Infrastructure, Goal 12 on Sustainable Consumption and Production, Goal 13 on Combatting Climate Change and Goal 17 on Partnerships for the Goals.
Project status: EaP GREEN: completed (2013-2018) while EU4Environment: ongoing (2018-2021)

The challenge

The unsustainable use of resources has triggered critical scarcities – take the shrinking of the Aral Sea for example, when water was diverted onto arid plains and led to the collapse of fishing there and created a public health hazard. At the same time, millions of people in Eastern Europe and Central Asia live below the poverty line.

The region’s industries – largely focused on fossil fuels – also have tremendous impacts on human and environmental health. Economic development therefore needs to be decoupled from environmental degradation. Can countries in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia skip some stages of industrialization and bring about a green economy that creates opportunities for all?

The project

The "Greening Economies in the Eastern Neighbourhood (EaP GREEN) Project" helped six countries of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership (EaP): Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine move towards a green economy. The Project aimed to introduce sustainable consumption and production into national development plans, legislation and regulatory frameworks; promote the shift to a green economy in selected economic sectors; and mainstream the use of Strategic Environmental Assessments and Environmental Impact Assessments.

EaP GREEN has been instrumental in achieving policy reform, institutional development and adoption of new practices and technical solutions by enterprises. Many of the pilot and demonstration projects implemented under the EaP GREEN brought about tangible and measurable monetary and environmental benefits. Even in the short term, the project is expected to generate at least EUR 20 million for the private sector in partner countries – more than double the EU’s contribution.

EaP GREEN also prompted a mentality change, with the region starting to recognise the benefits of green economies and the costs of inaction. It has also created political momentum that engages the Ministries of Economy and of Environment together with other government agencies and national stakeholders simultaneously to move firmly down the path towards this goal.

*The UN Environment Programme has been helping organic producers secure sale contracts worth millions of euros*

The next step - EU4Environment

To counteract growing environmental deterioration in Eastern Europe and the Caucuses, the UN Environment Programme and other international partners have been supporting the transition to a greener economy in the region since 2011. In 2016, commitments were made by nearly 40 countries - including Eastern Europe and the Caucuses - to complete over 100 green economy actions at the 8th Environment for Europe Ministerial Conference in Batumi, Georgia. The commitments were made under what is known as the Pan-European Strategic Framework for Greening the Economy, and the Batumi Initiative on Green Economy (BIG-E).

Today, our Europe Office continues to support the green economy transition by working with governments, businesses and citizens. Under the new EU-funded EU4Environment project, we aim to strengthen resource and energy efficiency, mainstream sustainable public procurement, promote eco-innovation in small-to-medium enterprises and design citizen educational programmes for sustainability in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. This work is a direct response to numerous country requests to help achieve national BIG-E commitments, as well as targets laid out in various national policies/strategies on Green Economy and Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP). This project, titled ‘Supporting Countries to Implement the Pan-European Strategic Framework for Greening the Economy’, will also where possible involve Central Asian states.

[1] FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia. 2012. European and Central Asian Agriculture Towards 2030 and 2050. Policy Studies on Rural Transition, no. 20. Written by Jelle Bruinsma. Available at: http://www.fao.org/3/a-aq341e.pdf

[2] Baynes, T.M. and Musango, J.K. 2018. Estimating current and future global urban domestic material consumption. Environmental Research Letters 13 (06501). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aac391

[3] Eurostat. 2018. European Neighbourhood Policy – East: Energy statistics. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/European_Neighbourhood_Policy_-_East_-_energy_statistics

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For more information, please contact rie.tsutsumi@un.org or alex.leshchynskyy@un.org.