The United Nations (UN) Environment Programme launched the Green Economy Initiative (GEI) in 2008 to create a UN system-wide perspective on energy use and development. The initiative’s main task is to provide policy and analysis in support of investment in green technologies in a planned transition away from the carbon pollution of fossil fuels. This is a macroeconomic approach, and no single solution can be applied globally.

The UN’s Environmental Management Issue Management Group on the Green Economy was tasked to prepare a report on how the UN system could support countries in making a coherent transition to a green economy. That report, Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and the Eradication of Poverty, has become the overall guidance for the GEI and its ...