Sustainable Green Economy Emerges from the Bottom-Up

Anyone who has closely followed the evolution of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn over the past two years would have noticed his progressive shift away from replicating the late Meles Zenawi. Slowly but surely, Hailemariam is emerging as a leader with his own style, approach and emphasis. From his inclination towards the politics of everything, instead of the economics of everything – as was the case during the time of the late Meles – to his unique affinity to consensual decisions, Hailemariam has begun to appear as a leader with all new power kinetics.

In his appearance at Parliament last week, Hailemariam displayed a mix of articulation, firmness and emotionality to defend the plans of his government presented to the joint session of the legislative houses by the rather ceremonial president a week before. If at all, the session has rightly shown Hailemariam’s sensitivities.

No doubt that this evolution of Hailemariam takes many by surprise, especially those within the diplomatic community. Until recently, the dominant perception within the club of foreign representatives in Addis Abeba, was that Hailemariam was a leader with limited leverage over real executive decisions. The feeling even stretched to the extent of painting the ruling party as a volatile coalition grappling with the negative externalities of consensual politics. But things seem to have changed in favour of Hailemariam and the ruling party.

As much as one could argue about the changes in form and style of leadership, however, it is far from easy to identify changes in substance. As far as policy lines are concerned, the ruling party is pretty much stuck in the era of its great leader, Meles.

Be it macroeconomic management, infrastructure development, market regulation, partisan politics or foreign policy, the lines of arguments of the ruling party have witnessed little changes over time. In this regard, the ruling coalition seems to be experiencing an exceptionally long lag time.

Hence, it may be difficult to see substantial changes in policy from the latest speech of Hailemariam. But if one counts the issues missed or deliberately left out, then the gaps are more clear. South Sudan, Ebola, threats of extremism, currency overvaluation, worsening governance, declining global oil prices and urban development challenges are just some of the pertinent issues that the top leadership of the ruling party are struggling with, day in and day out, but opted to leave out of their prime broadcast to the general public.

Of course, all the missing elements do not take equal weight on the agenda of the ruling party. But they are pertinent for they have direct and indirect impacts over the very political economy the Revolutionary Democrats are trying to build in the nation of 94 million people.

Even then, none would equate with the challenges the EPRDFites are facing in terms of realising their promises of building a climate resilient green economy. Even if the issue is missed within the arguments of Hailemariam, it has lately overwhelmed the policy circle like no other time.

The dynamic has two faces – external and internal. On the external side, there is a converging interest from the international community to put its money into real-time economic interventions, with a visible impact on the reduction of global carbon dioxide emissions. Internally, there is an interest from the side of the ruling EPRDFites to make use of the initial advantage they have created under the acclaimed leadership of Meles Zenawi.

It all started during the Copenhagen Climate Summit. What came out of a gathering – which saw Meles representing Africa in talks with high carbon dioxide emitters, such as China, United States, India and Europe – was not just a commitment for a 100 million dollars support for the global south, but also a national strategy for green growth.

Considering the fact that the issue closely relates to the personality of Meles, who is highly regarded within the ruling EPRDF, a subsiding attention to the issue of building a green economy is not merely another downward trend. Instead, it is a big miss for prime deliberations, such as parliamentary sessions. What this entails could be identified from the implications such a miss could have on the way both economic and political businesses are conducted.

On the side of the Copenhagen Summit, Meles and his long serving economic advisor, Neway Gebre-ab, disclosed the Climate Resilient Growth Strategy (CRGS) document of Ethiopia. A project with a total cost of 150 billion dollars, the strategy foresees the reduction of carbon emissions by 250 million metric tonnes from a base of 400 million metric tonnes by the end of 2020. It entails an annual investment of seven billion dollars. Unlike the absence from the high rated speeches, the issues have continued to pose a challenge to the leadership that has lost its policy mastermind, with an expert knowledge on the issues, on the one hand, and that wishes to strike a good balance between economic optimism and climate change realism, on the other.

Lately, there seems to be a revival of the agenda within the policy circle, albeit with a new buzz phrase – the new climate economy. Macro and sectoral planners and decision makers are seen trying to make a good balance between traditional tasks of pushing the real economic assignments forward with the aim of meeting the targets set in the flagship Growth & Transformation Plan (GTP) and the new trend of streamlining green growth within their tasks.

As it stands, the whole process of building a climate resilient economy is no more than rhetoric. Not only is it absent from policy speeches, but it is also given just lip service within the various planning tiers.

This does not mean that the issue is completely forgotten, however. It just means that the attention it seems to receive is incomparable to the elation it used to be provided with during the era of Meles Zenawi. This is in addition to the growing interest from the international community to support Ethiopia’s efforts to exercise an all new growth trajectory.

Any keen observer of the core leadership of the ruling EPRDF, including Prime Minister Hailemariam, could see that the dominant feeling on the issue is one of confusion. But it is not a confusion of policy, but that of implementation.

There is little that is coming in the form of an implementation framework for a green economy at a macro, sectoral or micro level. The ongoing practice involves simply making hopeful statements, indicating nothing more than a political commitment.

However, building a green economy demands more than political commitment. It requires the creation of an integrated, comprehensive and flexible implementation framework.

As far as the global experience is concerned, building an economy with minimal carbon emissions involves having an implementation framework designed, implemented and monitored from bottom to top. It all ought to start from the lowest unit of development- projects. It then progressively builds to programmes, sectors and the overall economy. Such is how countries acclaimed for building climate resilient economies, from South Korea to Sweden, have acted.

Cognisant of the essentials on which the economy under the leadership of the ruling EPRDFites is built from, such as smallholder agriculture, infant manufacturing and services with low labour productivity, it is a bottom up approach that could bring about the envisioned green economy.

Hence, the confusion within the policy circle ought to be cleared in favour of a bottom up approach to building a green economy. Implementation instruments, from project design standards to policy pillars, from sectoral performance indictors to project financing arrangements, ought to be designed from micro to macro levels.

Notwithstanding missing the issue in high level speeches, limiting it all to policy statements would be disappointing. That is why creating a journey with a clear implementation roadmap, and a focus on bottom-up learning, will be important. Such is not only about making use of the initial advantage that the CRGS provides, but also furthering the legacy of the late Meles Zenawi.


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