The authors examine the role of governance and vulnerability to climate change in green growth using a global panel dataset. They find that governance has a positive effect on environmental performance and vulnerability to climate change has a negative effect. Promoting good governance and reducing climate change vulnerability can thus contribute to a cleaner environment. They find qualitatively similar results for the sub-sample of high- income countries, but governance has an insignificant effect for the sub-samples of upper- middle-income, and lower-middle-and-low-income countries. High-income countries have strong environmental policies to protect the environment whereas other countries need to strengthen their relatively weak environmental policies. This suggests a need for substantial economic, technological and financial support from the international community for strengthening the environmental institutional capacity of developing countries.