Achim Steiner the Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme, the host of the SEED Initiative, talks here about the importance of the Green Economy and why supporting small-scale social and environmental entrepreneurs is of global interest.

Question 1: Last year UNEP launched the Green Economy Initiative highlighting the cost for the world if business is done as usual. What is a green economy doing differently and why do we need it?

A: UNEP launched the Global Green New Deal and Green Economy Initiative in October 2008 at a time when the world had suffered a fuel and food price crisis followed by a financial and economic one. The aim was to harness the challenge of the turmoil and the growing number of stimulus packages to begin shaping new and more sustainable economic models for the 21st century. The ‘deal part’ was in direct response to the crisis with the foundations laid setting the stage for the medium to longer term Green Economy. The overall thrust is mobilizing and re-focusing the global economy towards investments in clean technologies and 'natural' infrastructure such as forests and soil as this is the best bet for real growth, combating climate change and triggering an employment boom in the 21st century. A Green Economy therefore is an economy that delivers returns on natural, human and economic capital investments, while at the same time reducing greenhouse gas emissions, extracting and using less natural resources, creating less waste and reducing social disparities. It tackles a variety of challenges simultaneously while making every dollar, Yuan, Rupee or Euro work on multiple fronts.

Q2: The UNEP-hosted SEED Initiative just announced the names of five entrepreneurs who have in extraordinary ways combined business innovation with committing to making social and environmental contributions, often in far-off places and against the odds. Why is their transformational thinking so important?

A: The SEED Award winners are shining examples of what can be achieved with very little in terms of funds but an extraordinary amount by intelligent management, hard work and by shinning a fresh lens on persistent and emerging challenges. They demonstrate with their innovation that environmental challenges can be solved, and can be solved in a way that at the same time creates economic and social benefits. We therefore must do all we can to allow creative ideas to emerge. Local entrepreneurs can play an enormous role in demonstrating how the social and green economy can work and so help to spur on a collective and global sense of responsibility for our planet.

Q3: What do you think is needed now to build sufficient momentum worldwide for social and environmental entrepreneurship to make the difference that is needed?

A: What is needed is for the green revolution to gather pace? More transformative ideas need to be discussed and transformative decisions taken. The last half-decade of economic growth has been accompanied by accelerated environmental decline. Now we must maintain growth, especially in the developing world, by making it possible for environmental entrepreneurs to flourish. Climate change underlines how absolutely necessary this is.

Q4: If you could look into the future, do you think it possible that the Green Economy will be fully integrated into the world economic order in, say, ten years time?

A: The Green Economy is being glimpsed everywhere and it is gaining traction from Beijing to Buenos Aires and London to Seoul, Canberra and Kigali. There is now the urgent need to scale it up and to embed the concepts and smart market mechanisms in the centre of national economic discourse and planning. We need to thus deliver tomorrow’s Green Economy. In that sense the issue is not whether it is possible to fully integrate the Green Economy but rather can we afford not to.