EFTHIMIOS ZERVAS* School of Science and Technology Hellenic Open University Riga Feraiou 167, 26 222 Patra, Greece e)mail: zervas@eap.gr Abstract: This aim of this paper is to help explain the differences between the terms “sustainable development” and “green growth”. The concept of “sustainable development” was developed during the 80s and was based on three pillars: economy, environment and society. The concept of “green growth” is a more recent one. The two concepts have several differences. The first difference is that, from sustainable development to green growth, there is a degradation of the objectives. This is because the latter looses the social component of the former, as green growth is based only on the environment and the economy. The second difference is that green growth concerns only growth and not development, which is a broader concept. Green growth is only an economic growth based on the exploitation of the environment and can severely damage the environment. It is also one of the solutions proposed from the OECD to face the current economic crisis. For this last reason, green growth is accompanied by other economic or social measures, such as the degradation of formal education to the mere acquisition of skills, the increase of subsidies to private sector and the liberalization of international trade. KeyWords: green growth, sustainable development, economic growth, environment. The term “green growth” is nowadays a very widely and commonly used expression. However, it is frequently mixed, and sometimes used interchangeably, with “sustainable development” or, sometimes, with an older term, “ecodevelopment”. This interchangeable use of the two terms creates confusion, not only for the non)specialists but also in the scientific community, about the precise definition and meaning of each term. Looking on the Google search machine under the keywords “green growth”, more than 6,410,000 internet sites appear. The case is clear: too much information makes the information obsolete. The first site on the Google list, www.greengrowth.org, provides the motto: “Green growth: Environmentally sustainable economic growth for the well)being of all.” This motto seems to be a definition of “green growth”. Trying to verify if this is the general admitted definition of “green growth” another, narrower, search using the keywords “definition of green growth", is performed. This search results in 13,000 hits. Fist on this list is the document of the OECD with the title “Environmental Cooperation in the context of green growth: Quo vadis, Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central Asia?”. This document provides a definition of green growth that occupies almost half a page; however, the precise definition is still lacking. The aim of this paper is to identify the precise definition and meaning of the term “green growth”, and to investigate potential differences between the two terms: “green growth” and “sustainable development”. To achieve this, it is important to identify under which context the concept of “sustainable development” has been transformed to that of “green growth”. Most of the examples that will be used to this direction are taken from the Greek experience, because Greece is currently the country that faces the most important financial problems in the European Union. The examination of the historical evolution of the relationship among human beings and physical environment is a necessary step in order to understand the emergence of the terms “sustainable development” and “green growth”. We divide that evolution into three distinct environmental periods. ! " # At the beginning of the history of mankind environment was a hostile place where the new species should survive. Over the millennia, the Recent Advances in Energy, Environment and Economic Development ISBN: 978-1-61804-139-5 399