ICC Green Economy Roadmap – executive summary (2012)

The world is facing a critical challenge: how to create economic opportunities for growing population while ensuring that economic growth and environmental and social responsibility work together in a mutually reinforcing fashion. 

Two global megatrends are on the collisions course:

– Increasing competition and limitation in the use of earth’s finite resources;
– Predicted world population of 9 billion in 2050, growing at the most rapid pace in history;

Some key number provide the backdrop:

– 3 billion more middle class consumers expected in the global economy by 2030 with increased resource demands;
– 147% increase in real commodity prices since the turn of the century;
– $2.1 to £6.3 trillion of potential commercial opportunities related to environmental sustainability in natural resource sector alone.

Business has an essential role in bringing solutions to global sustainability challenges. Just as the creation of shareholder value requires performance on multiple dimensions, the global challenges and opportunities associated with sustainable development are multifaceted involving economic, social and environmental concerns. Today’s collective sustainability challenge requires all actors, whether business, government or civil society, to accept shared responsibility and shift towards more collaborative and solutions-oriented thinking.

To meet these challenges, the ICC Green Economy Roadmap calls for innovation, collaboration and governance on the conditions that need to be worked on simultaneously, both bottom up and top down and in the short and long term for a transition towards a “green economy“.

The guide includes the following ten high-level conditions which are supported by concrete intra-industry/business and collaborative action recommendations as well as best practice examples:

– Open and competitive markets
– Metrics, accounting, and reporting
– Finance and investment
– Awareness
– Life cycle approach
– Resource efficiency and decoupling
– Employment
– Education and skills
– Governance and partnership
– Integrated policy and decision-making