April 2011 Newsletter

Note from the Convenor

prosperity for all within one planet limits

I have been in post 1 month now and it has been very exciting. Thank you for all the enthusiastic Coalition contributions and conversations, and my apologies to those I have not yet met. I shall be calling you soon! I set myself the target in my first three months to re-energise the coalition, its membership, direction, plan and projects, and start raising its profile after the slight lull in activity between Sallys departure and my appointment. So how are we doing? Oliver Greenfield, Convenor, Green Economy Coalition Covered in this months newsletter: 1. Coalition gathering, 30 May-1 June 2011, Geneva 2. Update on activities, and Olivers thoughts on Rio PrepCom in New York in March 3. The Plan, and how to get involved 4. GEC expectations: what does it mean to be a Coalition collaborator? 1. NOTICE. Diaries at the ready: Coalitions bi-annual gathering, 30 May-1 June 2011, Geneva The agenda We will be reviewing progress and planning collaborative next steps Mobilising - National dialogues Building - the four project groups Influencing Rio 2012, and corridors of power Details and papers to come Timings 30 May: start at midday, to allow for travel 31 May: full day 1 June: half day, with CEO meeting We are grateful for IUCN for their hospitality in hosting the event

Finally, we want to get chief executives of collaborating organisations together for a half day meeting, probably on the afternoon on 1 June, so that we can consolidate organisation ownership of the Coalition. This idea came from UNEP. Please contact Kate Lines from IIED if you wish to attend. Coalition members please inform your Chief Executive and advise Kate of PA contact details.

Dorothea Seebode, Philips, on the benefits of Coalition membership Having participated in WBCSD Vision2050 project it is becoming very clear that business as usual, thus also innovation as usual is over. What does that mean? Changes are expected in terms of: What do we innovate? How do we innovate? In which context (legal and regulatory) will we innovate? Participating in the Green Economy Coalition is an important and effective way to understand and co-shape the changing innovation context, and to learn about the perspectives and needs of the many stakeholders who formerly were not involved in our innovation process.

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2. UPDATE ON ACTIVITIES Oliver Greenfield, GEC Convenor I joined a number of GEC members in Nairobi for the UNEP Governing Council event, and presented GEC thinking to Commonwealth ministers. Then to New York for the Rio PrepCom and our side event on National Dialogues, (special thanks to George Varughese from Development Alternatives, Rubens Born from Vitae Civilis, Tom Bigg from IIED and Cletus Springer on behalf of Canari for their excellent work representing the Indian, Brazilian and Caribbean National Dialogues, and thanks to Anabella Rosemberg of ITUC for chairing). As expected, Green Economy was the major agenda item at both these meetings, and the need to work with civil society to define and enable it was a major conclusion. This plays well to our position as the worlds largest civil society green economy group. Two other themes were consistent across these events. The lack of definition about what is a green economy? and at the same time the concern that, whatever it is, it has been developed in the west (or in the UN) as a constraint to developing country economic growth and is a potential new trade barrier. We are addressing both of these issues the definition of what we think green economies are in our Big Picture project, and by enabling countries to answer the question themselves of what is a green economy through our National Dialogues. There was another very interesting debate in New York. This was has globalisation outgrown these UN processes? Are more decisions now made in Davos, where policy and civil society are poorly represented? And if Rio 2012 is principally about green economy (read global economic transformation) then are we going to get the right level of debate, commitment and action if business doesnt turn up in force and governments only send their environment ministers? Let us be clear, the Green Economy Coalition is firmly committed to a successful Rio 2012 and therefore, perhaps, our first Rio policy ask should be: National governments, given the state of the planet and that large scale poverty and inequalities persist, we insist you send heads of government, finance ministers and environment ministers to Rio 2012, and encourage your business leaders to come also. I would welcome coalition thoughts on this potential GEC policy ask. In addition, we have received detailed feedback from coalition members on Rio and we will be using it to develop our Rio 2012 strategy, the draft of which will be shared soon. Then it was off to Birmingham, UK, to give the GEC response to the European Commissions flagship resource efficiency and eco-innovation programme (green economy by another name). Here the most interesting snippet was that the EC are having difficulty defining what is a resource?, because each European nation asked had a different response (e.g. for Croatia, their most precious resource is coastline for tourism and fisheries). This again seems to support the principle that green economy needs to grow from its cultural and ecological context, rather than be mandated. Of course we need international policy, but it needs to enable local economic resilience rather than force it to comply with external standards and definitions. We have also responded to OECDs green growth strategy, where more emphasis was needed on the timescale for action, and to the UN Global Sustainability Panels Civil Society consultation. I have used the many trips to draft our work plan (see below), which was agreed by my first steering group meeting. We have set a time and location for the next Coalition gathering, 30 May-1 June, Geneva, set up a new GEC office (thanks to IIED for providing the space) and recruited two interns (Andrea Demurtas and Janna Tenzing) to help with our plans and fundraising. I have also had discussions with the organisations leading the four project areas (GRI, IISD, WWF, ITUC) and am pleased how they are taking shape (more below). I do hope that the summarised plan and coalition collaboration piece helps you think how you could contribute to the Coalitions work. Please contact me if you would like to get involved or have questions. I shall be putting them in full on the GEC website (one of next months re-energising priorities). I look forward to an equally exciting second month. Your comments are most welcome.
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3. The Plan (available on our website soon) The current Coalition steering group is made up of Juan Marco Alvarez (IUCN), Steve Bass (IIED), Dorothea Seebode (Philips), Oliver Greenfield (GEC Convenor), Sally Jeanrenaud (previous GEC director), George Varughese (Development Alternatives) and Anabella Rosemberg (ITUC). They met virtually this month to agree our next years plan for the GEC. The plan has three main interconnected activity streams: mobilising, building and influencing.

Within mobilising, opportunities for Coalition collaboration are principally with our distinctive national dialogues. If you are thinking of running a dialogue on your organisational issues, perhaps you would like to do this in partnership with the Coalition and its partners, and expand your agenda to cover the questions: What does green economy mean in this national context? What is happening now? What change would help do more? What national and international change should the Coalition be advocating in Rio 2012 and beyond? We are currently developing priority countries for National dialogues, and looking for interested parties and new funding sources. Contact Oliver Greenfield Under building we have four main projects: 1. Big Picture the why, what and how of green economy (lead WWF and GEC contact Oliver Greenfield) 2. Economic governance in a world where no-one is in charge (lead GRI Pietro Bertazzi) 3. Green jobs (lead ITUC, Anabella Rosemberg) 4. Sustainable public procurement (lead IISD, Oshani Perera). This is the engine room of our consensus and intelligence building. Each project is keen to have more partners, thinking about questions being asked and the intelligence created. We are building online workspaces for each, so they are transparent and easier for coalition collaborators to contribute, in the meantime please contact the lead partner directly. The third stream of activity is influencing: It is here that we take what we have enabled and learnt from national dialogues, from the coalition projects, and debates and create effective advocacy. Going forward, we shall be much more proactive about giving the Coalition opportunities to contribute to our policy creation and consultation responses. Currently, due to time and resource constraints this is mostly achieved through Steering Group members.
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4. GEC expectation of Coalition collaborators We are enthusiastic about the number of new organisations who have expressed an interest in joining. So, it seems sensible to clarify the membership process and our expectations. We decided that this Coalition has a fixed term, two more years. Its emphasis is about mutual opportunity, helping to share and learn about green economy, and act together, adding value to organisations that could not engage on international advocacy, or did not have the resources to tackle this agenda alone. In the context of fixed term we did not want to put lots of resources into managing admission and bureaucratic governance processes. Therefore admission criteria and process is simple and light. Criteria - Being able to answer how will you contribute? (on content and/ or process: National dialogues, big picture intelligence, governance, green jobs, public procurement or other key green economy leadership, or influencing skills. Are you giving financial resources? Or contribution in kind? Both are welcome, but one or other is essential.) The only other requirement is that we use your brand on the coalition collaborators presentation slide, and create a link from our website to yours. The process is then one sheet of paper, which is submitted to the steering group for discussion and approval. The benefits are many intelligence building and greater influencing to name a few but perhaps we should cover the benefits from interviewing coalition members. One benefit is the opportunity to attend our twice yearly gatherings. Another reminder - the next is gathering is 30 May 1 June at IUCNs headquarters in Geneva.

Calling all Coalition collaborators: a practical collaboration request for the Sustainable Public Procurement project Oshani Perera, IISD GEC preliminary pilot project on sustainable public procurement (SPP) IISD is leading the GEC work stream on SPP and would like to enquire into GEC interest in helping to launch a preliminary pilot project on promoting SPP in Vietnam. In 2009, IISD worked with the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MARD), and the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (MONRE) to assess green procurement preparedness in Vietnam. In follow up, MONRE have invited IISD to work with them, to: review the prevailing law on procurement and identify what amendments would be needed to enable SPP conduct a feasibility study and linked parliamentary submission on integrating environmental and social dimensions into procurement law, and to make the case for MARD and the Ministry of Planning and Investment to design and roll out a national SPP action plan.

IISD plans to begin working on this project in May 2011 and would welcome support from the GEC. As such, the project could then be packaged as a preliminary GEC pilot on Sustainable Public Procurement. Do you have contacts or work in Vietnam that could contribute? If so contact Oshani, directly. Oshani Perera, operera@iisd.org and Fabrice Ressicaud, fressicaud@iisd.org

GEC secretariat contact details The GEC is supported by a secretariat hosted by IIED in London. International Institute of Environment and Development, 4 Endsleigh Street, London WC1H 0DD, UK Oliver Greenfield, Convenor, oliver.greenfield@greeneconomycoaltion.org Kate Lines, IIED Partnerships Officer, kate.lines@iied.org

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