Slovenian development plans forthe next seven years, until 2020, consider the environment as a development opportunity for a new development paradigm that seeks synergies between the economic, social and environmental fields. Thus, the proposals for the new Slovenian Development Strategy emphasize that socially and environmentally responsible development contributes to greater competitiveness more efficiently. Economic growth should be based on knowledge, creating higher value-added and identified opportunities for the transition to a green economy – and not mainly on increasing the intensity of work, and inefficient use of natural resources, which was the experience from the period of the current strategy.

The transition to a green economy with a responsible attitude towards the environment, highlighting the ethical foundations and enhancing the social capital, while also economically developing, is supported by several concepts – e.g., social entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility, backed by EU policies and integrated into national development documents. Therefore, it is wise to plan sustainable development of Slovenia in the period 2014 – 2020 by following world-class models of green economy, social entrepreneurship and social responsibility, and furthermore, to use a new, integral economic theory linking different concepts – thus also recognizing the fact that the dominant economic model is unsuccessful, as evidently shown by the ongoing economic crisis and the large number of unemployed.Integral economics by Prof. Ronnie Lessem and Prof. Alexander Schieffer represents a holistic model that builds on the many practical and, in our globalized world, successful sustainable economic models, in terms of connecting transdisciplinarity and transculturality, and encouraging to participate and build inclusive communities. It has been developed by the Center for Integral Development Tran4m in Geneva.In the period May 21 – 24, 2013, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Environment, together with several partners, organized five conferences in which prof. Lessem unveiled the integral economics, showed successful examples of integral economy and examined the possibility of implementing this new model in Slovenia (the second lecture in the series of lectures bellow). Initial consultation (lectures 1 – 9) took place on the 21 of May in Ljubljana, on the premises of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia, and the last one on the 24 of May at the Biotechnical Centre Naklo (10th – 12th lecture).

More information about the series of events is available on the link Integralna zelena Slovenija.Based on his visit to Slovenia, Prof. Lessem prepared a report – a vision TOWARDS AN INTEGRAL GREEN Slovenian Economy: IGSE, which is published on the website of the Center for Integral Development Trans4m. The basic ideas of this vision were presented in a lecture at the Biotechnical Center Garbsen (10th lecture in the series below), and the proposal is further used in the process of development planning for the Period 2014 – 2020.Slovenia is the first country in the world with the proposal for integral green economy at the national level, and thus has a real chance to become an integral green model for other countries.