COVER STORY • Global Governance at a Crossroads – a Roadmap Towards the G20 Summit in Osaka • 10

S

Interview with Dr. Frank Rijsberman, Director-General of the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)

earching for Environmentally
Sustainable & Socially Inclusive
Economic Growth at the G20

By Japan SPOTLIGHT
How to achieve economic growth that is environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive will be acentral theme of global governance as a long-term challenge. How the G20 Summit in Osaka on June
28-29 in 2019 addresses this issue and promotes international cooperation based upon the Paris
Agreement, a significant achievement in this domain, will be a point of focus for interested readers.
We were fortunate enough to interview Dr. Frank Rijsberman, director-general of the Global Green
Growth Institute (GGGI), a Seoul-based intergovernmental organization dedicated to promoting green
growth and climate resilience. He was visiting Tokyo to attend one of the preparatory meetings for the
G20.
(Interviewed on Feb. 14, 2019)

Introduction
JS: I would like to start by asking fora brief self-introduction,
particularly regarding yourinvolvement in the G20 preparatory
process.

investments in the developing world.
The background paper provides
recommendations for G20 countries on ways
in which they could help accelerate climate
action in the developing world. A top priority
for developing and emerging countries is toalleviate poverty and create decent jobs forthe next generation through achieving
economic growth. The green transformation
will play an important role in creating
hundreds of millions of green and decent
jobs, particularly to enhance the role ofwomen in the labor market and provide more
opportunities for the future generations.

Rijsberman: I am director-general of the
GGGI, headquartered in South Korea,
dedicated to promoting green growth andclimate resilience. We were established in2012, at the Rio+20 United Nations
Conference on Sustainable Development, andwe currently consist of 31 member countries
around the world and another 20 are in the
JS: Could you explain a little more
Dr. Frank Rijsberman
about the GGGI?
process of joining the organization. We werepleased that Japan, as the current chair of the
Rijsberman: We are called an institute, which is maybe connected toG20, asked us to write a background paper for this meeting (thethe original translation from Korean to English as we were originally
Climate Sustainability Working Group).
set up by a Korean initiative. We are not really an institute; we are not
The GGGI’s G20 Background Paper: Green Growth to achieve thea think-tank or NGO. More precisely, we are a treaty-based
Paris Agreement outlines the necessity of an accelerated transition toorganization. Countries join by ratifying our establishment treaty. We
a green and circular economy that will eradicate poverty, provide
have staff embedded in ministries of finance, planning, sometimes
decent jobs, and hit climate action targets. The paper includes theenvironment, to help countries work on long-term planning and
GGGI’s top public policy, public finance, and private investment
national development strategies. They help to mainstream therecommendations to scale up and accelerate green growth in
thinking that we need to transition to an economy that still grows in adeveloping countries.
way that is environmentally sustainable and socially inclusive. We
The transition to a green growth pathway needs to be accelerated
help governments come up with national green growth plans or
to achieve the Paris Agreement. G20 countries can play a key role inrenewable energy strategies, or long-term strategies for the Parisbuilding capacity in developing countries, meeting commitments
Agreement.
concerning climate finance, and enabling the engagement of the
The second thing we do is help them mobilize green and climate
private sectors of G20 countries in project development and
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COVER STORY 10

finance to implement those strategies. Over the last two years, we
helped our members mobilize over a billion dollars in green andclimate finance, which shows that there is a lot more finance out
there in the world, but there is a lack of capacity in the countries wework so we help them to access this finance, or to come up withproposals that meet the requirements of investors.
JS: The institute was founded originally as a think-tank and then became an international organization?

Rijsberman: It was founded as a Korean think-tank, but then became
an international organization in 2012, when 18 countries ratified ourestablishment treaty and we now have 32 members. The 32nd was
Burkina Faso, which officially became a member in April (2019). We
know that Uganda, Ecuador, Kuwait, and Nepal are all very advancedin their process of ratification as well, and 20 additional countries are
officially in the process of joining. Among these 50 or so countries,
some are donor countries, and some are participating countries,
where we have operations and staff. We will have staff in 35
countries as of this year, embedded in government ministries forfinance or planning, supporting governments in mainstreaming
green growth in their national development planning.
We also help them come up with renewable energy projects, orgreen city development projects or sustainable landscapes, or waterand sanitation projects – to transform their economies into asustainable growth path. In light of the G20 we are particularly
focused on implementing the Paris Agreement, and we believe that
this green growth planning approach is a very effective way tomainstream green growth thinking into the economy, which is
required to implement Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)
and meet the Paris Agreement. In fact, the No. 1 recommendationfrom the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is that
there needs to be a multi-ministerial commitment – not just theministry of environment or climate change – and it needs tomainstream the NDCs into the economy, which is very much theobjective of the green growth planning that we are helping to
implement.

Economic Growth & Environment

charge of finance and planning, and they have now accepted thatthey need growth, but the quality of growth really matters. South
Korea, for example, had a very rapid economic development, butsuffers from both yellow dust and fine dust which stop children
playing outside due to bad air quality and pollution. So rapid
economic growth while neglecting the environment had some very
negative externalities and environmental impacts.
There is now a consensus among nearly all leaders that climatechange is not something of the future but is affecting us now,
including wildfires, floods, persistent droughts and so on. Farmers in
Africa too are convinced that the climate has changed and isaffecting them today. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) report 2018 calls for rapid decarbonization of oureconomies if we are to live with climate change. The good news isthat now there are commercial opportunities to do that. Renewableenergy has become cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives, so there arecommercial opportunities to implement decarbonized policies.
Electric buses and electric cars are becoming cheaper than diesel
buses, for instance, in terms of lifecycle costs. There are many
opportunities to build green buildings that are cheaper to operate.
Governments need to put money on the table and have the rightpolicies, but there are many commercial opportunities for the private
sector to engage in this space, and this is a key message.

JS: Concerning sustainable growth and the

JS: Poverty could cause environmental damage, as

Rijsberman: I have been in this field for the last 40 years, and during
most of that time we had something called sustainable development.
We mainly work with the believers, such as the ministry of theenvironment, but if we approach the ministry of finance, theygenerally did not want to deal with sustainable development. Theirapproach was, we need economic growth first and then deal with theenvironment later. We are now actively engaging with ministries in

Rijsberman: There are people who equate green growth with low
carbon or environmentally-sound growth, but for us it is a threelegged stool. We need economic growth, it needs to beenvironmentally sustainable and socially inclusive. So we have amajor emphasis on green employment, and in the G20 we often talkabout “just transition”. There will be jobs lost in the transition from acoal- or gas-based economy to a different one, but then there areenvironment, would it be correct to say that mostcountries agree with this approach?

with the deforestation in Indonesia. Do you also
focus on mitigating poverty?

Japan SPOTLIGHT • May / June 201941

COVER STORY 10

more jobs gained, related to renewable energy, related to producing
wind turbines and so on. So “just transition” is the idea that we doneed attention for re-training or opportunities for depressed parts ofthe country where coal mines were located to shift to this new
economy. Overall, net-net we believe that the new “green” economy
does provide additional employment opportunities. There areopportunities to grow and deal with poverty at the same time.
In Asia, there was a lot of economic growth and a lot of
investments in fossil fuels and nuclear energy so there is a high costof transition. But in Africa, there are many countries where still only
between 10% and 20% of the population have access to electricity,so this new transformation to renewable energy could actually
increase access to energy and create new growth opportunities in a
way that is not carbon intensive.

Challenges to International Collaboration
JS: International collaboration would seem to befacing a critical situation today, including the issue ofthe global environment. How do you see the current
situation, where the United States is withdrawing
from the Paris Agreement, for example?

Rijsberman: There are clearly many challenges. The Paris
Agreement itself did not try to have a single overarching agreementthat everybody had to sign up to, but used a bottom-up approach
where all countries could voluntarily submit their NDCs, and this has
been a breakthrough in bringing people together while recognizingthat there are quite important differences among countries. This wasa major success of international diplomacy. While it is true thatPresident Donald Trump has announced his intent to withdraw, there
is a waiting period of several years, so in the meantime the US ispresent here and in all the other climate negotiations. There aremany actors within the US, from states to cities to companies thatare continuing that momentum, and in the current Congress there isa new climate action committee.
China, meanwhile, has confirmed that it will stay. In Asia, theprimary driver for green or green tech may not be climate change but
air pollution, which causes asthma and kills people all over Asia.
Beijing had more blue skies this year than in previous years, as coalmines have been closed and more electric buses are on the roads.
China has become a leader in certain areas of clean technology andis commercially exploiting these opportunities, for example inconstructing solar panels. In Europe, wind energy provides a thriving
industry and many commercial opportunities. Japan is pushing for ahydrogen economy, and various countries are finding out that these
could bring a new generation of prosperity.

environmental protection, and could be madepossible through technology, particularly information
technology.
Rijsberman: Many technologies make a positive contribution, fromrenewable energy in batteries as some of the base technologies,
leading to electrification and transport. The largest area where weneed to see progress is in buildings and infrastructure. In Asia, smart
cities are very popular. In Africa they are called green cities as they
are often realized through green buildings that are better insulated or
public transportation that is electrified, recycling waste into energy
and so on. Smart cities are a more high-tech variation of the conceptof green cities. It is actually possible to build passive houses –houses that do not emit greenhouse gases in construction or whenin use – through smarter use of insulation, and smarter use of
district heating or cooling. Singapore was one of the first cities todevelop “district cooling” on a large scale. Copenhagen believes it
can be a zero emissions city by 2025 – so it is possible to rethink theway we rebuild our infrastructure.
When Rwanda built its new airport, I asked the minister if the
airport would be green and he was surprised to learn that he could
rethink the design to make it a zero-emission airport that was
actually cheaper to construct. So, the new airport in Kigali is likely tobe the first green airport in Africa, showing that there areopportunities to build airports and other major infrastructure that canbe green.
JS: Asian countries were traditionally less interested

in the environment and have been more focused on
economic growth. Having been stationed in South
Korea, could you share your thoughts about Asia?

Rijsberman: I think that in the last few decades there has been
incredible growth in Asia, during which the environment took a backseat, but now people are confronting air pollution and other impacts
and so the mindset is changing. In South Korea there is a new
government, which has changed its perspective on energy policy andhas increased its renewable energy target from 4% to 20% and thishas led to a lot of societal discussion in South Korea. The United
Kingdom started such a discussion 10 years ago, when it had close
to 50% of its energy coming from coal but in 10 years it has gone
down to almost zero. People were worried about energy security but
now wind energy has become cheaper than coal and building windturbines has generated a lot of jobs. A rapid transition took place in
10 years. My expectation is that in South Korea, in five to 10 years
from now, there will be much higher ambitions.

Smart Cities, Asian Views on Environment
JS: Smart cities could contribute to energy saving and
42 Japan SPOTLIGHT • May / June 2019

Written with the cooperation of Joel Challender, who is a translator,
interpreter, researcher and writer specializing in Japanese disaster preparedness.