Green Economy for Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication

In a green economy, growth in income and employment is driven by public and private investments that reduce carbon emissions enhance energy efficiency and lessen environmental degradation. As economic growth and investments become less dependent on liquidating environmental assets and sacrificing environmental quality, countries can attain more sustainable economic development. The Green Economy Report by UNEP’s Green Economy Initiative demonstrates that the greening of economies is not a drag on growth, as in some myths about green economy. UNEP’s macroeconomic model projects that a green economy would, after a few transition years, deliver more growth, reduce poverty, and generate more jobs than would a business as usual, brown economy. The methodology used in this research is cross section approach with four separate dependent variables which are GDP growth, income per capita, unemployment rate and poverty level. The key independent variable is Global Green Economy Index (GGEI) that measures performance of countries in the global green economy aspects. The observation used is obtained from secondary data which consist of 60 countries. The result shows that green economy has negative impact towards economic growth but has positive impact towards income per capita. In addition, green economy does not have a significant effect towards unemployment but it decreases the poverty level. Based on this result, both public and private sectors are recommended to continuously support and adopt green economy in the future for sustainable development and poverty eradication. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s5p43