There are many claims and counter-claims about whether green growth creates or destroys jobs. But fully assessing the consequences of environmental policies for employment presents a considerable challenge, and at present it is not possible for policy-makers to assess conflicting claims about the quality and quantity of green jobs that have already been created, or may be created in the future. One approach would be to focus on changes in employment in industries that provide environmental goods and services. Another would be to count the jobs created when firms adopt technologies with less environmental impact and switch to less polluting inputs, regardless of their primary outputs. Both approaches can be helpful for assessing the direct impact on jobs and the scale of structural change required by the transition to green growth. But green policies also affect labour markets indirectly through supply chains and through changes in overall demand. The destruction of ‘brown jobs’ in polluting industries should also be taken into account.
This report provides an assessment of existent and potential green jobs in major economic industries of a small island developing state: Mauritius. It aims to inform and shape the Maurice Île Durable (MID) project, which was launched in 2008 with the objective to make Mauritius a world model of sustainable development.
This policy brief draws the attention of policy-makers and social partners in least developed countries to the role of skills development in facilitating the building of greener economies, as a way to achieve sustainable development and poverty eradication. It has been written at the request of ILO constituents from LDCs, where environmental deterioration and the consequences of climate change are among the major challenges of the twenty-first century. While change is a challenge, it also offers economic and employment opportunities. The brief arises out of the Green Jobs Initiative, a partnership between the ILO, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the International Organization of Employers (IOE). It draws on research applied in policy design and numerous case studies of country experiences and good practices.
This paper addresses the challenge of Germany׳s energy transition (Energiewende) as the centrepiece of the country׳s green industrial policy. In addition to contributing to global climate change objectives, the Energiewende is intended to create a leading position for German industry in renewable energy technologies, boost innovative capabilities and create employment opportunities in future growth markets at the least possible cost. The success in reaching these aims, and indeed the future of the entire concept, is hotly debated.
For policy makers in China, the development of a green economy presents opportunities and challenges not only for the central government, but also for provincial and city governments. This study measures clean energy economy at the city level in China, by counting green jobs and firms through an analytical approach. As shown in this study, green jobs and green firms are distributed unevenly across different regions in China. This study also quantifies provincial clean energy policies in China and finds significant variations in clean energy policy actions. Spatial error model (SEM) analyses indicate that local clean energy policies, along with socio-economic factors such as population, per capita gross domestic product, educational attainment, emissions of sulfur dioxide, and marketization of the regional economy, explain the variation in green economy across cities. Cities located in a province with clean energy policies have 54.3% more green jobs and 61.8% more green businesses, compared with cities located in a province without such policies.