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This article discusses the role that innovation plays in the transition to a green economy, with special attention paid to the importance of diffusion and transfer of technologies. The article first describes the origins and conceptual foundations of a transition to a green economy, concentrating on the initiative launched by the United Nations Environment Programme, and leading to the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012 ( Rio +20). The article then reviews the critical role of innovation in the reconfiguration of the economy's capital stock, leading to a discussion of the roles of both innovation and environmental policy in promoting such technological change. It next discusses the channels for international transfer of technologies and their relationship to the international policy architecture, and proposes that international discussions concerning technology transfer, particularly those related to environmental technologies, have suffered from a lack of coherence in policy positions, based probably on a fundamental misunderstanding of the economic nature of these processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic waste has recently emerged as an environmental issue of growing concern. This is due to the increasing consumption of electronic devices and a heightened awareness for the potentially detrimental environmental impact of a non-sustainable management of these devices in their end-of-life stage. In this article e-waste governance in the USA will be explored. More specifically, the voluntary collaborative initiatives that are taken at the federal level, in a context where a general regulatory framework is largely absent, will be examined. Such voluntarism is linked to a larger trend towards voluntary action in US environmental governance and to a particular framing of the e-waste problem as a materials management, instead of a waste management, challenge with shared responsibilities for all stakeholders. A critical exploration of the various initiatives will show that the voluntary public–private partnerships on e-waste have only produced limited results so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]