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Introduction: Services and the Green Economy

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Services and the Green Economy

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Abstract

The debate about the emergence of an environmentally sustainable global economy has become more substantial and diverse in the last decade, and at times arguably more controversial. Early concepts of the ‘green economy’ in the 1990s (e.g., Jacobs 1996) have been superseded by a variety of different concepts of how economic activity might become environmentally sustainable (Bina 2013), what it constitutes (Dryzek 2005), how it should be measured and a plethora of critiques levelled at competing popular and policy manifestations of the idea of a green economy (e.g., Le Blanc 2011; Caprotti and Bailey 2014). Yet, equally, the concept of a green economy has gained much wider currency as a policy paradigm and acceptance within state and in international policy discourses (UNEP 2011; UNDP 2012). A key aspect of this conceptual evolution is the way that the green economy has been reframed as a combined response to meet economic, climatic and environmental challenges, although acknowledging in this that enormous challenges around both the commitment of actors and practical implementation remain (Newton and Cantarello 2014).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Science and Arts, City University London, London, UK

    Andrew Jones

  2. Centre for International Business Studies/Economic Geography, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Patrik Ström

  3. Centre for Municipality Studies, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden

    Brita Hermelin

  4. Department of Geography, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Grete Rusten

Authors
  1. Andrew Jones
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  2. Patrik Ström
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  3. Brita Hermelin
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  4. Grete Rusten
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Sch of Arts & Social Science, City Univ London, London, United Kingdom

    Andrew Jones

  2. Department of Business Administration, University of Gothenburg, Goteborg, Sweden

    Patrik Ström

  3. NORRKÖPING, Sweden

    Brita Hermelin

  4. Department of Geography, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Grete Rusten

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© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)

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Jones, A., Ström, P., Hermelin, B., Rusten, G. (2016). Introduction: Services and the Green Economy. In: Jones, A., Ström, P., Hermelin, B., Rusten, G. (eds) Services and the Green Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52710-3_1

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