Please find final post-event debriefing here!

9 January 2019 | Cape Town, South Africa 

It is increasingly understood that governments do need the direct involvement of the private sector to realise the green economy. With contributing up to 60% of total employment and up to 40% of national income (GDP) in emerging economies, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) play a crucial role here. With innovative business cases, they are driving the economy forward inclusively and sustainably. A number of SMEs around the world create jobs along their value chains for marginalised communities, underpriveleged women or unemployed youth.

Nonetheless SMEs are still unsung champions which need further support to realise their full potential. Besides challenges such as access to financing and a lack of adequate business management skills, the ecosystem in developing and emerging economies often additionally obstructs business development.

Various actors of entrepreneurial ecosystems have developed diverse mechanisms and approaches to provide effective support to SMEs. The parallel policy group session at the GEC Meeting hosted by SEED aims to learn from success stories of eco-inclusive enterprises and leverage good practice examples in order to scale their impacts. It provides recommendations on how to strategically fuel the success of SMEs through tailored support mechanisms, adequate financing instruments and enabling policies. The outputs from this policy session shall be used at the 2019 PAGE Ministerial Conference. 

SEED will invite participants to: 

• Map: Challenges & Barriers 

Given the uncharted territory of the green economy transition, SEED guides participants to map the challenges and barriers present across various levels of driving inclusive and sustainable growth. 

• Share: Good Practices

SEED also invites participants to pitch good practices based on their experiences to support SMEs in effectively taking a greater stake in the green economy transition. 

• Prototype: New Approaches 

SEED invites participants to prototype and discuss solutions to the challenges faced by SMEs and other stakeholders in the green economy transition, using its Policy Prototyping Toolkit. In doing so, it will prototype the approaches, policies, and instruments to unlock the full potential of SMEs. 

  Learn more about the GEC Global Meeting 2019 here.