Improving the Investment Climate in Croatia • Evening for Safe Steps ...

News&ViewsThe global economy is tentatively crawling out of thelargest post WW II recession. The major issue for governments as well forbusinesses and the general population is how to embark on the path togrowth again. This is the state of affairs in the industrialized world. ForChina and India the issue was never the recession but the magnitudeof their growth rates which ranged from 8-12% during the past decade.currently value and how much are we concerned about environmentalissues. Public opinion research - GfK Roper Global Green Gauge - conductedin 2010 in 26 world economies across the globe may offer someinsights. Everyone knows about the climate change threat but few reallycare about it: the majority places it in tenth place in a list of global concerns– the first three being occupied by recession and unemployment,inflation and high prices, and enough money to live right and pay thebills. The value listed as “preserving the environment” is ranked 27th outof 54 different values. Consequently, only a minority of respondents (30%)take the environment into account when making purchase decisions allor most of the time. Business responds to consumer preferences: globalnew products with claims of being environmentally friendly constitute only12% of new product launches in 2010 (up from 8% in 2009). Another attitudethat appears from public opinion research conducted recently inthe US shows that “keeping energy prices low” is important for the vastmajority of the population. This attitude is incongruent with other preferences,like reducing dependence on foreign energy sources, and protectingthe environment from the effects of energy development and use.Yet another research study conducted in the European Union in 2008points out the fact that respondents do not perceive their consumptionhabits as an environmental issue to be worried about! As if environmentalproblems related to the manufacture of consumer goods, householdwaste generation, personal transport and overall household energy usewere all unrelated to our consumption habits and life-styles. To wrap it up:(1) consumers are not quite ready yet to embrace the green paradigmand changed life-styles; (2) their efforts are mostly of palliative natureand trivial in their effects on the environment (e.g. separating waste andturning off lights), and (3) demand for green products and services is stillreportThe Slow Road to a Green EconomyBy Igor Matutinović, GfK - center for market research, ZagrebThe issues of the major consequences of global economic growth –from biodiversity loss and climate change to the rapid depletion of theremaining reserves of conventional oil - have slipped down the politicalagendas of the major global economic powers. It appears that capitalisteconomies are institutionally designed to function properly only underthe conditions of growth and, therefore, the aforementioned issues arequickly submerged each time economic growth stumbles. But submergingthe problems will not make them disappear and they will re-emergewith even higher intensity once our economies are on the stable growthpath again. But who is to take responsibility for these problems once theyreappear – businesses, politicians, consumers? And where shall we belooking for solutions – in free markets, in technology or within ourselvesand our system of values and beliefs that guide our life-styles? Can wehave growth and the greening of our economies at the same time? Beforewe try to give a tentative answer to these questions, let’s look at what weconfined to a niche. All these suggest that this recovery is not likely tobe substantially “greener” than any in the past. What should happen sothat we “change course” from unsustainable to sustainable patterns ofproduction and consumption? My research and that of other suggest thatmarkets and technological change will not suffice. Instead, we shouldfirstly change our worldview – that dominant set of values and beliefswhich define our overall attitude towards life and our natural environment.These values and beliefs shape our institutional framework – the way weorganize our societies in all important aspects that concern political andeconomic life. Finally, the institutional framework regulates many detailsof our economic behavior and, consequently, its environmental impact.The timely change of the dominant worldview in Western societies is neitherguaranteed nor inconceivable: the future is open and the responsibilitylies with all of us - in our different roles as political actors, businessleaders, and consumers.26 ISSUE 4/2010