Resolution number: 02
Title:

Green Economic Growth

Submitted by: D66 (Netherlands) and Centerpartiet (Sweden)

The Congress of the Liberal International, convened in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, on 20 October 2012

Recalling the

• 56th LI Congress resolution on “Eco-efficient Economy” in 2009,
• The failure of the international community to reach an ambitious agreement on climate change at the Copenhagen Summit in December 2009,

Notes that

• The free movement of goods and services is a prerequisite for reducing the earth’s total environmental impact,
• Free trade is a force that makes it possible to lift people out of poverty and to simultaneously change a pattern of consumption or behaviour,
• When deforestation of rainforests or overfishing of oceans occur this has a severely negative impact, yet GDP statistics reflect the contrary.

Recognises that

• With information technology, we have experienced an almost revolutionary development in the past decades. A similar effect is required in order to make green-technology and commercial green solutions available to more people. This is also an effective way to show solidarity with the poorest countries, who often suffer the most, but are least able to adapt to environmental changes,
• History shows, that the companies who chose to see possibilities instead of problems when prerequisites for entrepreneurship has changed, often turn out to be the winners.

Calls on

• All member parties to acknowledge that the focus must be on making the whole economy more environmentally sustainable;
• All member parties to acknowledge that successful environmental policies build on the understanding of the interactions within the eco-system itself and the interaction of the ecosystem, the economy, and, society;
• All member parties to promote clean and green production to help the world to a sustainable ecological and economic development. A policy that emphasizes reduced production rather risks inhibiting the development towards a cleaner environment and less impact on our climate;
• All member parties to make efforts in analyzing how resource allocation affects the economy as a whole;
• All member parties to start and/or intensify their efforts to use taxes in order to achieve a green tax shift. By increasing the taxes on environmentally destructive pollution, and, e.g. lowering the tax on work and businesses. The overall tax revenue is neutral;
• All member parties to agree on establishment of additional robust, reliable and widely recognised international indicators that in lieu of using GDP would provide a more accurate picture of welfare gains.