  Under the assumption that the cosmological constant vanishes in the true
ground state with lowest possible energy density, we argue that the observed
small but finite vacuum-like energy density can be explained if we consider a
theory with two or more degenerate perturbative vacua, which are unstable due
to quantum tunneling, and if we still live in one of such states. An example is
given making use of the topological vacua in non-Abelian gauge theories.
