POSITIVE CORNER #4: Clean Prosperity

For a long time, it was taken for granted that a nation's economic development and prosperity were inextricably linked to an increase in climate-damaging emissions. The simple formula seemed to be: growth = emissions.

At the beginning of the 1990s, however, a number of countries began to reverse this traditional economic logic. A number of highly industrialised countries, which were among those with the highest per capita emissions precisely because of this, have since achieved a significant decoupling of economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions. While gross domestic product (GDP) continues to rise in these countries, per capita emissions are falling significantly at the same time (https://ourworldindata.org/co2-gdp-decoupling, Our World in Data).

A very recent study by the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (eciu) in the UK, analysing current economic and emissions data from 113 countries representing over 97% of global GDP and 93% of global emissions, concludes that the number of countries that have completely decoupled their economic performance (GDP) from emissions has increased by one third -  from 32 to 43 - in the 10 years since the Paris Agreement in 2015. Numerous other countries with significant shares of global GDP and emissions have now achieved at least partial decoupling. The study documents a globally significant trend reversal that is particularly visible in advanced economies and among major emitters in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East (https://eciu.net/analysis/reports/2025/10-years-post-paris-decoupling-globally).