Relationship between New economics for sustainable development (NESD) concepts.

 

The creative economy complements other new economics for sustainable development (NESD) concepts, especially green, blue and circular economy, as well as frugal innovation. 

Green and circular economy: Creative industries and approaches offer complementary potential, in addressing sustainable consumption and production patterns of a circular economy. Moving towards sustainability requires the detachment of resource exhaustion from economic growth, which can happen through creatively designing out waste and pollution from standard business practices and keeping products and materials in use, ideally regenerating natural systems. This creative approach goes beyond simply recycling and waste management, but rather puts the focus on designing products, processes and services to optimize their use and impact. This means that when something reaches the end of its useful life, it is re-used, repaired, or remanufactured for another use, or the materials it contains are recycled and re-injected into the economy elsewhere. This presents the opportunity to fundamentally address the way in which value is created in our economies and minimizes the exhaustion of resources. Creative and circular production patterns require new sets of skills from the labor force, collaboration between stakeholders in supply chains as well as new and adapted regulations, market structures in international trade, distribution systems and transfer of innovation and technology. Going beyond the concepts, unlocking the opportunities of a creative and circular economy calls for a complex change in both developed and developing countries. This system-wide approach to behavioral change, and in turn, a change in production patterns, will generate an increase in the demand for knowledge-driven and labour-intensive activities to think and act creatively. A high potential for a positive change suggests these activities may be further channelled towards environment and climate friendly manufacturing of goods and services, focusing the creative potential on the 2030 Agenda. These changes present new opportunities for youth with research, entrepreneurship, employment and education, and skills development. This notion encourages the connection between creativity, production, distribution and exhibition, and circling back to new creation. The broad focus on process and product has kept the United Nations informed with its work on creative economy since the creation of UNCTAD’s Creative Economy programme in 2004. Since that time, multiple actions have demonstrated the vital connection between creativity and circularity in creating sustainability.

 Yellow Economy: Large social media platforms negatively impact the orange economy. Their bargaining power allowing them to not adequately rewarding the independent creators who originally generated the attention, data, content, and/or ideas.

 Digital economy: The digital aspects of the creative economy provide great opportunities, as demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many countries have strengthened their digitalization strategies, thus enabling the development of digital services and a global value chain model. Developing countries can benefit from the opportunity to offer digital creative services to a global audience. Technological advancements can bring significant production gains in the creative economy, which usually has a low productivity in developing countries. Culture is increasingly finding new routes to markets, leading to radical transformations in the way people create, consume and enjoy cultural products. Globalization and the convergence of multimedia and telecommunications technology has transformed consumers from passive recipients of cultural messages into active creative content co-creators. Digital distribution in industries such as video-game, design, and music has transformed global markets and allowed new industries and consumers to emerge in developing regions, including Africa and Asia (OECD, Digital broadband content: mobile content, new content for new platforms, Working party on the information economy, 2005). Access to digital technology could also simplify and enhance access to intellectual property (IP) in many least developed countries (LDCs), especially in Sub-Saharan Africa where actors of creative economy struggle to defend their IP rights. For example, in 2013, the Nigeria Copyright Commission disclosed that the country was losing over USD 1 billion to piracy annually. 

Blue economy: One of the ways in which the creative economy links with the blue economy is through the development of tourism, especially coastal and eco-tourism, which can incorporate several domains of the creative economy, varying from cultural services (museums, theatres, and gastronomy) to the production of tourism goods (handicrafts), which has helped to globally create employment for young people, women and people from indigenous and coastal communities. Such sustainable tourism services may be particularly successful, especially if developed and run by the local population. Online platforms that offer popular services have an important role, especially with home and boutique accommodation to a broad range of national and international clients. However, in the tourism industry, there is also demand for more advanced (digital) creative services, such as architectural services, marketing, and publicity services, as well as related software production. Additionally, other aspects of the blue economy should be highlighted, and link the creative economy more directly, from various audiovisuals that protect/exploit ocean resources, to gastronomy and cultural heritage, that can highlight some possible sustainable consumption patterns associated with the blue economy. 

Frugal innovation: Innovation is often directly related to design. For innovation to be (cost) effective, it needs to be associated with great design, either through the design of software, buildings, or fashion. In each case, areas in which frugal innovation can play an important role to make the world more efficient/effective, the creative economy provides key services. In the creative economy, many actors tend to be MSMEs, who are usually more agile in adapting to market need, than many larger enterprises. This benefits frugal innovation, where functionality and being able to address customer needs, are some of the key principles. Especially among the more digitized parts of the creative economy, there is great flexibility about being able to respond to new directions. The largest challenge faced by creative entrepreneurs is often the issue of labor shortages. Now, with digital services, this does not have to be as big a problem, where building international value chains can be more easily done. The COVID-19 pandemic has improved the capabilities of many countries and entrepreneurs to connect digitally, thanks to the previously mentioned drive for digitalization. This will further facilitate the integration of the creative economy in frugal innovation. In order to flourish in a sustainable, fair, and competitive way, creative industries need digital platforms governed by transparent IP and tax regulations, for a seamless trade in services they provide. Furthermore, national policies, as well as international import of services regulations, should ensure that cross-border services create quality jobs with minimal safety nets and health coverage.