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Making inclusive green growth a reality in Africa 14 Dec 2015

Sustainable development became a global paradigm about three decades ago to push the idea that our physical environment is finite and the use of natural resources must make allowance for its availability and utility to future generations of life on the planet. With human activities depleting the ozone layer and resulting in warmer temperatures, sustainable development emphasized that economic benefits must not endanger the physical environment without which man – and other living organisms – cannot survive.
    
But over the last decade, the sustainable development construct has evolved beyond environmental consciousness to incorporate social awareness. We now have terms like “green growth,” “inclusive business,” “inclusive green growth,” among others, to promote the pursuit of social and environmental values, in addition to financial bottom lines.

Whatever the terminologies, what is absolutely clear is that a fixation on financial and economic benefits without social and environmental considerations will endanger the survival of life on our planet. While we must do business and make money, it should not be at the expense of leaving behind a world for our children that will be fraught with environmental and social costs.

Therefore, we need to ensure that the economic growth we are fostering is also green and inclusive. As Rachel Kyte, World Bank's Vice President and Special Envoy for Climate Change, said, “Today, more than ever, we must pay attention to the triple bottom line. Inclusive growth must be green. Green growth must be inclusive.”

While the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21) in Paris will focus on “greening” economic growth, it's important to discuss what benefits inclusive green growth can bring to Africa and highlight how this can be made an objective and a reality on the continent.
What it means for Africa

The World Bank published in 2012 a report called “Inclusive Green Growth – The Pathway to Sustainable Development.” The authors argue that green growth is necessary in order to shift from the growth paradigm that has been followed for the last 250 years. That growth, while bringing economic advancement, also came with huge costs to the environment and increased social inequality.

The authors define green growth as “growth that is efficient in its use of natural resources, clean in that it minimizes pollution and environmental impacts, and resilient in that it accounts for natural hazards and the role of environmental management and natural capital in preventing physical disasters.” However, green growth needs to also be inclusive. That is why the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines inclusive growth as “economic growth that creates opportunity for all segments of the population and distributes the dividends of increased prosperity, both in monetary and non-monetary terms, fairly across society.”

Applying these paradigms in Africa would mean developing infrastructure on the continent and accelerating economic growth without depleting all the natural resources and harming the environment, while at the same time creating opportunities for everyone, regardless of social status. Moreover, if Africa's development path is clean, the continent would add fewer greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and lift millions of its people out of poverty.

Going by the continent's current climate adaptation capacity, Africa stands to be more negatively impacted by the effects of climate change. For instance, a flood incident in Lagos would kill more people than flood of similar intensity in New Orleans. A recent study by the World Bank showed that adaptation to climate change in Sub-Saharan Africa will cost $16 per capita, which translates to billions of dollars in financing that is just not available. Therefore, green inclusive economic growth will benefit the African continent more than any other region of the world.

New development approach

In his book, “The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good,” American economist, William Easterly, says Planners are advocates of top-down decision-making approach, while Searchers are agents for the alternate approach, which is bottom-up.

If I may quote a bit from what William Easterly wrote:


“The short answer on why dying poor children don't get twelve-cent medicines, while healthy rich children do get Harry Potter, is that twelve-cent medicines are supplied by Planners while Harry Potter is supplied by Searchers…Planners determine what to supply; Searchers find out what is in demand.”

In advising what growth model would be more meaningful for African countries, I intend to draw from Eaterly's thesis. If we take the top-down decision-making approach of Planners, we may reckon that African countries need to maintain the old economic growth model and close the gap with the developed world in terms of infrastructure and human development indices. Building infrastructure and reaching double-digit annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth would be the objective. But as we have seen, African economies would grow, and some people would become billionaires. However, we would also contribute immensely to global warming, social inequality would remain, if not rise, the epidemic of diseases like cancer and other vices would exacerbate.

The alternative is to take the bottom-up approach of Searchers, by ensuring African governments implement environmentally and socially conscious policies to foster inclusive green growth. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a fitting platform to begin with. While a focus on innovation and industrialization is necessary, African governments must also provide greater access to quality and affordable education, improve the health and well-being of their citizens, promote gender and social equality and build sustainable societies etc.

We must admit that a lot of mistakes have been made. Some of those mistakes have been blamed on colonialism and the neo-colonialism effect whereby African countries are still being manipulated by their colonial masters. But I like to think that the lack of inclusive leadership on the continent is responsible for it being regarded as the least developed region in the world. Nevertheless, we are not beyond redemption. We still have an opportunity to undo our mistakes and get back on track. The interesting thing is that we now have a chance to do it the right way giving the body of development policy knowledge that is available.   

Africa can lead the global agenda of low-carbon development and inclusive green growth. The continent can attract all the ideas been mooted in climate science and attract the investments that can come along with it. The African continent has the sun and enough water resources to lead in generating clean energy to power its development.

We will be taking our development destiny into our own hands if we introduce the study of environmental science in our learning institutions and teach our people how we can understand our own ecology and optimize our natural resources. We can be completely free from so-called development aid, empower our people, build smart African cities, light up our rural areas, mechanize food production, strengthen industrial value chains and eradicate poverty.

There is much optimism that, unlike previous climate conferences, COP21 will produce binding agreements on frameworks that countries will implement to mitigate climate change. The African continent stands at the cusp of being the greatest beneficiary of the outcomes of the latest climate conference in terms of the scale of investments that can be attracted to green development projects on the continent. But can Africa governments provide the necessary leadership and foresight to facilitate these projects and make things happen? That is a question that every African needs to put his or her respective national government to task on so that it can rise up and provide an answer for the sake of achieving inclusive green growth on the continent.