Scoping Green Growth and Innovation in Nordic Regions

This working paper is published as part of the project “Regional Strategies for Green Growth and Innovation”.

This working paper illustrates the relatively new and explorative nature of the green growth concept. First, it includes a literature review on green growth and related concepts, with particular focus on conceptualizing green growth and innovation from a ‘territorial’ or ‘spatial’ perspective; that is, focusing on the implications of the geographic, demographic and economic characteristics of specific regions within Nordic countries for their green growth performance and potential, e.g. urban versus rural experiences. This section includes an overview of national policies and strategies for green growth in each of the Nordic countries. Second, it presents a quantitative study using available data, intended to identify different regions’ potential for and barriers against green growth and to produce visual representations in the form of maps. The paper’s second part illustrates in particular that identifying and developing a quantitative approach to mapping green growth performance and potential at the regional level faces many challenges, and it remains a work in progress.