Comprehensive green growth indicators across countries and territories

Abstract

A sustainable transition to green growth is crucial for climate change adaptation and mitigation. However, the lack of clear and consistent definitions and common measures for green growth implies a disagreement on its determinants which hampers the ability to proffer valuable guidance to policymakers. We contribute to the global debate on green economic development by constructing green growth measures from 1990 to 2021 across 203 countries. The pillars of green growth are anchored on five dimensions namely natural resource base, socio-economic outcomes, environmental productivity, environmental-related policy responses, and quality of life. Contrary to the aggregated methods used in constructing indices in the extant literature, we employ a novel summary index technique with generalized least squares attributed-standardized-weighted index that controls for highly correlated variables and missing values. The constructed indicators can be used for both country-specific and global data modeling on green economic development useful for policy formulation.