Greening Our Economy for a Sustainable Future: Barriers, Opportunities and Policy Options

Dear Colleagues,

Thanks to rapid economic development over the past few decades, people worldwide live much longer and have much higher living standards today than just one generation ago. However, many economic development activities are not sustainable, often creating problems such as climate change, deforestation, pollution, and inefficient energy use as “byproducts”. For example, the global surface temperature has risen by 1.1 °C above the pre-industrial level and would exceed 2 °C if no mitigation measures were taken (IPCC, 2023). The resulting climatic extremes have claimed 6.7 million lives every year and led to acute food insecurity affecting more than 70 million people in developing countries (UNEP, 2024). Economic losses from extreme weather events are also staggering—estimated at 227 billion U.S. dollars from 2019 to 2023, a figure exceeding the GDP of about 60% of the world’s countries in the same period (Romanello et al., 2024).

After years of struggle, debate, and exploration, “greening our economy” has now been widely accepted as a means to a sustainable future. Many solutions have been put forward to address the issues discussed above, including (but not limited to):

• Low-carbon transformation of the industrial structure;
• Green transformation of the energy system;
• Building green and low-carbon communities, cities, and regions;
• Sustainable production and consumption;
• Green technology and smart production;
• Green finance;
• Global coordination in green governance.

Yet, before these solutions can really green our economy, much remains to be learned: How may these solutions be implemented cost-effectively? Are there barriers to implementing these solutions? What are the challenges involved? What are the available policy options to optimize their impacts? Do these policies work? Are there unintended consequences? To name just a few. Thus, this Special Issue is designed to help answer these questions and advance knowledge of how we may green our economy for a sustainable future in an efficient, fair, and fruitful way.

References:

IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). 2023. “AR6 Synthesis Report Climate Change 2023.” Accessed June 15, 2026. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/.

UNEP (United Nations Environment Program). 2024. “Global Resources Outlook 2024: Bend the Trend-Pathways to a Livable Planet as Resource Use Spikes.” International Resource Panel. Accessed June 31, 2026. https://www.unep.org/zh-hans/resources/Global-Resource-Outlook-2024#.

Romanello, M., Walawender, M., Hsu, S.-C., Moskeland, A., Palmeiro-Silva, Y., Scamman, D., Ali, Z., Ameli, N., Angelova, D., Ayeb-Karlsson, S., Basart, S., Beagley, J., & Others. (2024). The 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: Facing record-breaking threats from delayed action. The Lancet, 404(10465), 1847–1896. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01822-1.

Prof. Dr. Qihui Chen
Guest Editor

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