Pardee Center Task Force: Governance for a Green Economy
Project Coordinators: Adil Najam (anajam@bu.edu) and Henrik Selin (selin@bu.edu)
The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future convened a Task Force on “Governance for a Green Economy” in preparation for the forthcoming 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). This project is part of the Pardee Center’s ongoing activities related to sustainable development governance and the United Nations (see, for example, Pardee Center event at the UN CSD 2010, Pardee Center event at the UN CSD 2009, publishing Sustainable Development Insights in collaboration with SDKP, recent Pardee Center publications).
The project convened a meeting of invited experts who were asked to reflect upon and discuss the following question: If the world were to construct a truly “Green Economy” over the next 20–40 years, what sort of global governance institutions and mechanisms would be needed to manage it? After which, a select group of experts were asked to turn their ideas into short “think pieces” for publication as a Pardee Center Task Force Report and for presenation to the Rio+20 preparatory process as an input into its deliberations.
The topic is timely and of policy relevance because the Rio+20 preparations are focused on two substantive and closely connected themes: governance institutions and green economy. These themes were discussed together and experts explored what governance for a green economy would need to look like beyond 2012 from the vantage point of the realities of the existing institutional landscape, and with a bold blue-skies approach that takes the question of “what should be” as seriously as concerns about “what could be.”
A meeting of the Pardee Center Task Force on Governance for a Green Economy was held at the Pardee House, Boston, on Friday, September 10, 2010. Members of the Task Force who attended the meeting and contributed to the Task Force report include:
Tom Bigg (International Institute for Environment and Development)
Elizabeth DeSombre (Wellesley College)
Mark Halle (International Institute for Sustainable Development)
J.P. (Hans) Hoogeveen (Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature & Food Quality)
Saleemul Huq (International Institute for Environment and Development)
Bernice Lee (Chatham House)
David Levy (University of Massachusetts at Boston)
Ricardo Melendez-Ortiz (International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development)
Adil Najam (Pardee Center, Boston University)
Henrik Selin (Pardee Center, Boston University)
Stacy VanDeveer (University of New Hampshire)
Patrick Verkooijen (World Bank)
Paul Wapner (American University)