Green Growth: The stakes for Water Resources in the Arab Region

Green Growth and Green Economy have emerged as new paradigms for sustainable development. The definition of these new terms, however, remains largely controversial as the contents and issues are still very broad. Yet, many would agree that Green Growth refers to economic growth, environmental sustainability, social inclusion and poverty reduction. The new slogan unifies these issues in a way that implies the absence of trade-offs, suggesting that Green Growth may be the silver bullet that everyone has been looking for. A brief overview on concepts of Green Growth, however, reveals considerable differences. According to UNEP(2009) “Green growth is [...] a way to pursue economic growth and development, while preventing environmental degradation, biodiversity loss and unsustainable natural resource use”thus putting economic growth at center stage.AFED (2011) in its regional Green Growth report for the Arab world gives equal weight to economic development, social equity, and environ-mental sustainability. Also, such perspectives ofGreen growth are not really new, considering that sustainability – as a very similar three-fold concept – has been put forward since Rio 1992 and the ‚greening‘ of industries and businesses has been debated academically since more than a decade (see e.g. Braun, Schulz, Soyez 2003). Green Growth, however, lifts this more narrow industry debate to a higher scale of whole green economies, offers a decidedly economic perspective on sustainability, and, in any case, has invigorated and elevated the urgency of the debate