Green Economy: Opportunities for Jobs, Growth and Innovation in Europe

ISPRA's Director General, Stefano Laporta, participated in the international conference on the green economy on the occasion of the World Environment Day, entitled "Green Economy: Opportunities for Jobs, Growth and Innovation in Europe". During the conference, held in Brussels at the Permanent Representation of the Netherlands, he said that "we live in a time characterized by a global population increasing at growing rate (with higher living standards). Natural resources are diminishing rapidly and the limits of the planet force humanity to find innovative ways to use resources efficiently, dealing with the limitations of the world's natural capital and therefore operating fundamental changes in the economic systems."
"The green economy can be a solution to these challenges, as it can generate economic growth and create quality jobs."
"The road towards the green economy is not easy. There are several obstacles, yet there are also many signs and indicators showing us that the road is now started." As an example, he cited data provided by the IRENA 2015 report, according to which there are nearly 8 million jobs in the field of renewable energy, 18 percent more than the previous year.
"A return to 'business as usual' appears increasingly unlikely and unsustainable, as this would cause costs to human health, limits to growth and economic development and worsen the resilience of society. The stress related to water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate changes, loss of biodiversity will inevitably increase."
"We need strategies for moving towards a greener economy and growth."
"The transition to the green economy depends on the ability to reach an overall agreement on a set of planetary limits - as far as global warming, pollution from nitrogen, loss of biodiversity and ecosystems, use of water - that global society must not cross. "
ISPRA's DG stated that "there is no 'one size fits all', a single prescription for implementing strategies for green growth in Europe and that these must be sewn on the territorial features, even if they fall in a global context". "Essentially these strategies should consider the specific social, historical, cultural, political and geographic characteristics of different nations. The Italian success stories in the field of green economy - from organic farming to eco-design, patents obtained from bio-engineering to large-scale production of industrial components to increase energy efficiency - prove it. "
"Technological innovation has become a foundation of the transition from a 'brown' economy towards a green economy and support the 'decoupling' between economic growth and natural resource consumption. Areas such as synthetic biology and geo-engineering can significantly increase the efficiency of resource use, helping to meet the challenges of food and land use and climate change mitigation. In Italy we have important and recent success stories in which technological innovation generated by domestic enterprises have helped to solve serious environmental problems and create jobs. "
"However, technological innovation often has serious and legitimate concerns about bio-security and potential impacts on the various environmental components."
"The agencies and the national environmental protection institutions must play a significant role, both to support policy decisions in favor of a green economy based on technological innovation and also to ensure that environmental risks are integrated in decision-making (according to the precautionary principle) and to enhance the environmental benefits and costs and integrate them in the accounting at the time of decisions on financial investments".