How to promote eco-innovation in Latin America and the Caribbean?
INNOGREEN experts worked with Inter-American Development Bank (IBD) to explore how to promote green innovation in Latin-America and Caribean countries (LAC). Green innovation involves new or significantly improved goods and services, processes, marketing methods, organisational structures and institutional arrangements that, intentionally or unintentionally, lead to environmental improvements compared to relevant alternatives.
Eco-innovation makes the sustainability of socio-economic growth compatible with that of the natural system. It is a matter of urgency to move towards a circular economy, by profoundly restructuring the economy in the medium and long term. This document proposes an operational definition of the main concepts behind green innovation, as well as other relevant concepts in the framework of a recovery and sustainable development model for the LAC region. It also considers different typologies of instruments and interventions and elaborates recommendations for the implementation of comprehensive policies to promote green innovation in LAC countries. So far, green innovation seems to have performed poorly among LAC countries. In addition to fostering as much as possible local capacities in the LAC region for the production of green innovation, it is also necessary, as an integral part of it, to develop capacities for the absorption and adoption of external technology, which can be transferred from the leading countries of such technologies and practices. Given that there are different barriers to green innovations, it is unlikely that there is a single measure that will mitigate these barriers and therefore a combination of various instruments (policy-mix) will be necessary.