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Initially envisioned as a two-year project, the GEI has been expanded to include a number of related UNEP and UN-wide initiatives focused on providing macroeconomic evidence for significantly increasing investments in the environment as a means of promoting sustainable economic growth, decent job creation, and poverty reduction.

GEI activities include providing advisory services to countries interested in greening their economies, producing research products, such as The Green Economy Report, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity series of reports, and the Green Jobs Report, and engaging partners to effectively promote and implement green economy strategies.

The world is being challenged by crisis on many fronts. The financial and economic crisis that erupted in 2008 has pushed many countries into recession, affecting business and jobs throughout a globalized world. For the world’s poor, this exacerbated the food crisis caused by rising food and fuel prices which alone have increased the number of people worldwide at risk of hunger and malnutrition to 950 million. This combination has jeopardized chances of reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and is even threatening to wipe out decades of development gains.

At the same time, the energy and climate crisis continues to advance. Our demand on the planet’s “natural capital” has doubled over the last 40 years and today global greenhouse emissions at 42 GtCO2e (gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) per annum are five times greater than the Earth can absorb.

If current patterns of energy consumption remain unchanged, the International Energy Agency has estimated that by 2030 global energy demand and GHG emissions will increase by 45 per cent. This would result in economic losses equivalent to 5- 10 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) per year, as compared to the 3 per cent of GDP loss that came as a result of the financial and economic crisis in 2008. Poor countries would suffer losses in excess of 10 per cent of their GDP.

While many factors have contributed to this set of challenges, a common denominator is identifiable: patterns of investment that have failed to deliver on objectives of sustainable development, while adding to human and ecological risks. Unsound financial investments lie at the root of the financial and economic crisis from which some, but not all, countries have emerged.

As governments around the world devise policy responses, there are fundamental lessons to be learned about our investment strategy of the past. Falling world trade, rising prices, massive losses of jobs, ecosystem degradation and collapse, widespread concern over delivering action on climate change, and public resentment of the excesses of “casino capitalism” have sent a wakeup call that it is time for a fresh way of thinking.