Green Growth and Sustainable Development: Monitoring Progress towards the Environmental Millennium Development Goals

摘要

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Green Growth means "Fostering economic growth and development, while ensuring that natural assets continue to provide the resources and environmental services on which our well-being relies". Furthermore, since Sustainable Development provides an important context for Green Growth, The United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) include the goal "Ensure environmental sustainability", which considers four specific targets related to the development policies, the biodiversity loss, the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities and the improvement in the lives of slum dwellers. In this context, our paper aims to provide both analytical and empirical contributions for the monitoring of the MDG achievements. With this regard we firstly propose a Poverty-Growth-Environment triangle, and then we analyze the available statistical evidence in order to summarize the current progress and future perspectives towards the Environmental Millennium Development Goals.