1. Insights into Green Growth in East Africa
Gareth Phillips,
Chief Climate Change Officer & OIC PECG2
These slides reflect the views of the speaker and are not necessarily the views of the African Development Bank

2. Green Growth in East Africa
Contents
GG policies and strategies in East Africa
Implementation challenges
Case study
Conclusions / for discussion

3. GG policies and strategies in East Africa
Kenya – Green Economy Strategy and Implementation Plan
Rwanda – Green Growth and Climate Resilience Strategy
Ethiopia – Climate Resilient Green Economy
Uganda - Green Growth Development Strategy
AfDB – Green Growth Framework – defining levels of intervention at project and program level and a ten year target to transition to Green Inclusive Growth
With support from multiple Development Partners – EU, DFID, Germany, Korea, Multilateral Funds – GCF, and institutions including SWITCH to green, GGGI and GGKP

4. Green Growth is a moving target
Defining GG remains a challenge, partly because the goal-posts are moving all the time Is it a process (e.g. a management system) or a performance standard? GG policies and projects should address multiple criteria, though the weighting applied varies widely. Should energy be prioritized?
Governance and transparency
Labour, women and youth rights
Environmental and social performance
Triple bottom line / inclusive growth
Good / best available technology
Resource use efficiency
Compliance with NDC / long term strategy
Contribution to SDGs

5. Benefits of Green Growth
GG means (amongst other things) growing clean now rather than growing at any cost and cleaning up later Growing green has multiple benefits and should be (financially) rewarded:
Lower risk / high sustainability resulting in better long term prospects
Greater resource use efficiency = lower costs
Less supply chain management
Marketing benefits = better revenues
Better employment prospects
More resilient economic growth
Fewer / lower social or public costs
Better resource use efficiency
Contributions towards NDC and SDGs

6. The problem is… There is no financing mechanism
GG suffers from a lack of a financing mechanism for a number of reasons:
It is not the subject of a UN convention
Several existing conventions overlap significantly (UNFCCC, CoB; CoD…)
The GREEN Climate Fund is not particularly green, its focus is climate
Green Bonds are certainly in fashion but they fund their own definition of green growth…
….there is no clear or agreed definition of GG
It is hard to distinguish GG from “good practice” – the additionality question
FONERWA in Rwanda has raised almost USD100m to fund GG projects

7. Case study – Atmospheric Space
The UNFCCC / Paris Agreement can be seen as a sub-sector of GG
The scarce resource is atmospheric space to dump waste CO2
We have a global voluntary agreement on how the remaining “2 degree” space can be used (NDCs)
Voluntary commitments are driving down absolute emissions and GHG emission intensity (T CO2 per unit output)
Funds are available from both public and private sources
Policies are being implemented to favour reductions in emissions with developed and some developing countries looking at trading regimes. Others considering taxes
We are learning about the impacts of these policies on international competitiveness and trade

8. Conclusions / for discussion
Resource use efficiency – there are many resources which we need to manage better and GG can provide a platform
However we are hampered without a common definition of GG
The Paris Agreement / UNFCCC does this for GHG emissions
Can GG build on climate finance and broaden the scope or are we bound to focus on GHG and energy? And/or
Can we raise funds to apply GG to other resources? (FONERWA did)
Can regional integration help to harmonize the definition of GG and address the competitiveness issues which will arise when Govts start to implement GG policies and strategies?
And finally, countries that we think of as green today did not necessarily arrive where they are now by adopting GG policies and strategies

9. Thankyou for your attention
Contact:
Gareth Phillips, Chief Climate and Green Growth Officer – PECG2