More than 300,000 people marched in New York for environmentally responsible policies. Recently Christiana Figueres and Guy Ryder have written about the job creating possibilities of green and clean.
In the past, action to combat climate change was viewed largely as running counter to economic growth, with “going green” implying a sacrifice of prosperity for the sake of the environment. Today, we know better. By taking action to mitigate climate change, companies are promoting sustainable growth and creating high-quality employment.
The United States, for example, has added 1.2 million “clean” jobs to the economy since January. Since last year, employment has risen by more than 115% in the solar industry, and jobs related to energy efficiency have increased by over 50%.
In China, more than 1.7 million people are already employed in the renewable-energy sector. And the Global Climate Network that seven million additional jobs could be created if government targets for wind, solar, and hydropower are met. Worldwide, an estimated 5.7 million people were employed directly or indirectly in the global renewable-energy industry in 2012 – a figure that could triple by 2030.
Likewise, India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act aims to ensure livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adult members volunteer to perform unskilled manual labor. The lion’s share of this work involves projects that can boost environmental resilience, from soil and water conservation to flood protection, reforestation, and small-scale irrigation.
In Brazil, the green program, which offers incentives to poor families to carry out conservation work in local nature reserves, provided monthly payments of $35 to more than 16,600 families in its first year. There are plans to extend the program to 300,000 families, and to add other climate-friendly projects, such as renewable-energy schemes. Colombia and Mexico have introduced similar initiatives.
Achieving a meaningful global climate agreement at next year’s United Nation’s Global Change Conference would substantially boost the potential to create high-quality green jobs. The alternative – continued growth of global CO2 emissions – would not only limit this potential; it would undermine economic output and, according to estimates by the International Labor Organization (ILO), reduce productivity by more than 7%, on average, worldwide.
The fact that two of today’s most pervasive challenges – climate change and unemployment (especially among the young and the unskilled) – can be addressed simultaneously, with mutually reinforcing policies, leaves governments and international institutions with no excuse for inaction. The ILO and the UN climate convention recognize this, but they cannot do it alone.
