CHALLENGE PAPERS PAPER 10: GREEN JOBS AND SKILLS Decent and Green Jobs with a Just Transition: a step towards sustainable development Anabella Rosemberg, International Trade Union Confederation, anabella.rosemberg@ituc-csi.org 1
ABOUT GLOBAL TRANSITION 2012 Global Transition 2012 is a collaborative initiative between Stakeholder Forum and nef (new economics foundation) that focusses on the Green and fair Economy theme towards the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in 2012 (UNCSD), also known as Rio+20 and Earth Summit 2012. GOAL To achieve an outcome from the UNCSD 2012 that catalyses a Global Transition to an economy that maximizes wellbeing, operates within environmental limits and is capable of coping and adapting to global environmental change. PURPOSE To build a global civil society and stakeholder movement to promote alternative models of economy that can deliver sustainable development to people, countries and generations that builds on the three pillars of sustainable development: social, environmental and economic. THE INITIATIVE CONSISTES OF THE FOLLOWING ACTIVITIES: Research and Thinking and Policy and Advocacy: to commission and publish a series of research reports and think-pieces that will provide the evidence based analysis and address critical components of a Global Transition and translating research and thinking into key policy outputs towards Rio+20 and beyond and organising workshops with governments to discuss policy options; and building capacity and developing tools for countries to institute policies and systems that move towards a Global Transition; Coalition Building and Dialogue: building a coalition of actors and organisations from the global North and South committed to the principles and objectives of a Global Transition; Submissions: making official submissions to the Rio+20 process based on think pieces and dialogue; Information and Resources: publishing informative guides and briefings on aspects of the green economy; in particular developing a how to guide for the green economy Roadmap work that is underway in a range of sectors and contexts. ABOUT STAKEHOLDER FORUM Stakeholder Forum is an international organisation working to advance sustainable development and promote stakeholder democracy at a global level. Our work aims to enhance open, accountable and participatory international decision-making on sustainable development. Stakeholder Forum works across four key areas: Global Policy and Advocacy; Stakeholder Engagement; Media and Communications; and Capacity Building. Our Global Transition 2012 initiative sits within our work on Global Policy and Advocacy. ABOUT nef nef (the new economics foundation) is an independent think-and-do tank that inspires and demonstrates real economic well-being. nef aims to improve quality of life by promoting innovative solutions that challenge mainstream thinking on economic, environment and social issues. We work in partnership and put people and the planet first. MORE INFORMATION If you would like to provide feedback on this paper, get involved in the Global Transition 2012 initiative, or put yourself forward to write a paper/blog, please contact Kirsty Schneeberger, Senior Project Officer at Stakeholder Forum: kirstys@stakeholderforum.org 2
ABSTRACT When leaders meet in Rio de Janeiro for the Earth Summit in June this year, unemployment, precarious work and inequality will be central to their domestic agendas. At the same time, global environmental change is increasing stress on the most vulnerable, affecting all domains of society. If the Summit is going to deliver for people, it needs to take all these elements into account. It will also need to take concrete steps that will lead to changes on the ground. The proposal presented in this Challenge Paper calls on all governments to take a country-based policy package to Rio+20. This should include a target on decent job creation in the next 5-10 years, achieved by environmentally-friendly investments and regulations accounting for 2% of GDP, and a series of social and decent work policies which will ensure green jobs contribute to workers and communities prosperity. Generating millions of new green and decent jobs and transforming existing ones into more greener and more decent ones could be one of the most positive consequences of a Rio+20 summit. This agenda could kick start the Global Transition, giving people hope about the positive impacts of a more sustainable society, particularly those suffering from poverty, precarious employment or unemployment. A green/decent job pledge would also be part of a solution to environmental and social imbalances created by the current unsustainable production mode. This would occur by driving a new kind of investments in developing countries whilst giving them access to a new model of development. 3
INTRODUCTION Why a global transition needs to incorporate the challenge of decent work and employment? We are faced with a jobs emergency. In the developed world, 50 per cent more people were unemployed in 2010 than in 2007. And, globally 84 million more people now live in extreme poverty than before the credit crisis of 2007-2008. The vast majority of these are located in developing countries. Statistics on the number of people suffering from a lack of adequate nutrition, housing, water, and livelihood opportunities is daunting. Currently, 1.4 billion people are living in extreme poverty surviving on less than US$1.25 a day. Close to 1 billion people suffer from hunger, and people in the Horn of Africa are experiencing famines. Worse still, this figure is an underestimate. Even those who have work are finding it hard to make ends meet. This is true in both developed and developing nations. And, over the next decade, half a billion young people are set to join the workforce. For G20 countries alone, 110 million jobs must be created by 2015 to return to pre-crisis employment rates. This equates to 22 million jobs per year. Even before the crisis, it was clear that policies were inadequate to create this level of employment. Given this, a debate on the transition towards a Green Economy that does not consider jobs, decent work and equity, will fail on behalf of workers. When the crisis emerged in the developed world, many voices highlighted the potential of green recovery packages - suggesting that investing in 'green' projects would create jobs and prevent a worsening of the crisis. 1 However, there not enough time was given to see the outcomes of the recovery packages before austerity cuts were put in place, limiting the prospect for a job-led recovery. In emerging economies where environmentally-friendly investments were maintained, job benefits are beginning to emerge. However, the challenges are still huge when it comes to the quality of these jobs and their capacity to improve people s prosperity. The first report of the Green Jobs Initiative, 2 identified sectors in these emerging economies, where despite the encouraging number of newly created jobs, working conditions where replicating traditional ones, for example in agriculture. 3 The report also identified that in some cases, such as recycling, working conditions were even worsening. In the developing world, chances for reinventing development in such an unstable global economy has become more and more slim. Social turmoil in many of these countries is exacerbated by the lack of hope and jobs for the younger generations. Piece-meal approaches to environmental protection or social progress will not be able to reverse trends over environmental degradation or inequalities. There is, therefore, a need for a massive investment plan in environmentally friendly and job intensive projects. These trends go of course in parallel with those related to environmental degradation, which are already harming peoples capacities, in particular in the poorest countries of the world. If unchanged, in a few decades time this will have a far wider impact on jobs and incomes globally. How can a Green and Decent job agenda spark change? At a time when workers face unemployment or informal work on the one hand, and environmental degradation on the other, concerns over livelihoods have been prioritised, and the environment has often been sidelined, in particular by policymakers. A decent job-centered agenda arising from environmentally-sound investments and regulations, often called green jobs, is a means to kick start a transition to a Green Economy that both preserves the environment for both present and future generations and moves towards equity and inclusion for all people and all countries. Bringing together the need for environmental protection and decent work creation holds a promise that humankind will be able to address the defining challenges of the twenty-first century in a mutually reinforcing way. These challenges include: averting dangerous and potentially unmanageable climate change and protect the natural environment; and to provide decent work which translates into well-being and dignity for all in a context of population growth and the current exclusion of over one billion people from economic and social development. 4
TRADE UNIONS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT For green jobs to deliver in terms of sustainable development, a clear definition should guide action. The trade union movement has been clear that a green job: should reduce environmental impacts of enterprises and economic sectors to sustainable levels, while providing decent working and living conditions to all those involved in production and ensuring workers' and labour rights are respected. 4 Decent Work is defined according to the definition adopted by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), which states that: jobs must provide opportunities for men and women to productive work in conditions of freedom, equity and human dignity, in which rights are protected and with adequate remuneration and social protection. 5 From these definitions, it is clear that several dimensions of green jobs must be taken into account. This includes: their ability to reduce the environmental impacts in all sectors; their capacity to deliver decent work, their performance on trade union rights; and their ability to outperform traditional jobs when it comes to the inclusion of women and youth in the labour market. These three dimensions are developed below: Green Jobs everywhere: It is clear that the promotion of green jobs should not only focus on job creation. All jobs must be transformed in order to preserve the environment, using production and working methods that are as resource, material and energy-efficient as possible. This approach should apply to the entire supply chain. There is no sense in making a distinction between good and bad workers. All jobs must be transformed into sustainable ones. Green jobs, only if decent: Another dimension is related to the qualitative aspects of 'green jobs'. Some 'green jobs' might seem good for the environment in the short run, but could cause environmental damage because of improper practices. While, some 'green jobs' may relieve pressure on natural resources, but could involve dirty or dangerous working methods, precarious employment or low income. These are not the green jobs we are aiming for to solve the challenges of unemployment, poverty and environmental degradation. For green jobs to build a sustainable future they must be decent jobs. Green jobs for all: The participation of young people, women, poor and low skilled workers in the Green Economy is fundamental. As said in the introduction, almost half a billion young people are set to join the workforce within the next decade. It is essential to attract them to new sectors, to offer them green and decent jobs and to ensure that skills-enhancing programmes promote their integration into the labour market. A green job strategy also needs to provide opportunities for working women and facilitate their employability through: anti-discrimination and family-friendly strategies, special programmes and quotas to hire women for non-traditional jobs, green skills training for women, and policies aimed at reducing gender wage gaps. Green Jobs should also be relevant for informal workers, and provide them with a pathway towards decent work. In the long run, a just transition requires far more than just job creation It would be naïve to think that job creation will be sufficient to secure justice in the transition towards sustainable societies. The economic transformation needed, if we are to respond to current social and environmental challenges, is huge. All sectors of the economy, each worker and each community will have to face major changes. Unfortunately, in the past, those changes have never been smooth. As yet, we have not witnessed a single country which has achieved a transition to sustainability, let alone one that has done so in a just manner. Historically, transitions, such as the ones from state-centered to market-based economies, have left huge social and human suffering in their wake. Our point here is that the critical mass to support such a change still needs to be created. To date, there are as many, if not more, signals indicating that the transition towards sustainability will be driven by economic interests, as there are signals indicating that people will steer the process of transformation, putting social and environmental justice at the center of it. The former will leave people on the margins of its development. A JUST TRANSITION A Just Transition to a Green Economy needs to take into account the some sectors will shrink, others will emerge, and the majority will be transformed. Many skills will become obsolete, social protection systems today 5
under attack in most of the developed world, or struggling to be created in the developing world will be under stress, as they will be needed to support communities as they experience change. Even the ways we conceive our societies need to change, inter alia: moving towards a resource-efficient society, prioritizing renewable over non-renewable resources, implementing a life-cycle approach to products, better integration of environmental and social costs into production, and ultimately re-thinking our economies around the satisfaction of needs rather than the capacity to buy goods. These changes will have major impacts on workers and communities, who are at risk of being pushed into poverty and exclusion if a strategy of Just Transition is not put in place. 6 On the other hand, the transformation could bring real improvements to workers' standard of living. In the short run this could mean: re-fueling public services, shortening commuting time due to better public transport, and allowing for improvement in social housing. In the long run, and depending on social arbitrages at the national level, moving towards a sustainable society could bring workers an opportunity for better quality jobs and better working time arrangements, the corollary of which, would be more leisure time and higher levels of wellbeing for workers. But it is important to keep in mind that despite these positive aspects, it is fundamental to address job concerns with pro-active policies, and not simply expect workers to wait passively for better times. The complexity of the transition also needs to capture the fact that there will be as many transitions as there are pathways for development and prosperity. Each country is starting from a different stage of development. In developed nations, the challenge is to reduce over-consumption and transform its economic base into a sustainable one, while guaranteeing the preservation of social welfare institutions and decent work. Emerging economies need to move from resource-intensiveness and unequal growth to sustainability. In developing nations, the challenge is to use this transition as an opportunity to generate an industrial wave which could for the first time in history, reduce global imbalances and give them a share of innovation and technology development for their own progress. In all these cases, along with the promotion of investments and jobs, an ambitious pro-active and historically unique strategy needs to be put in place A Just Transition. A Just Transition can be understood as a framework of policy interventions aimed at accompanying workers and communities in the transformation towards sustainability. This framework needs to be flexible enough to be adapted to different transitions, but a core set of policies must be included. These include: The need for labour rights in new investments; Training, re-training and skills development and other active labour market policies; Social protection measures, including income protection for workers in sectors at risk; Meaningful social dialogues; Serious ex-ante research on potential impacts of environmental policies; and Solid economic diversification policies at the local level, where major gaps on employment opportunities could be felt with the decline of some sectors. Without these Just Transition policies, the movement towards a sustainable society is likely to be unfair, more costly and harm social services and green jobs will remain a niche. HOW CAN RIO + 20 DELIVER? The challenges of the transition are numerous, but probably one of the most difficult ones today is how to start the process of transformation. This is especially so when all signals indicate that, rather than entering into a paradigm shift we are going back to old (false) thinking and recipes with disastrous social, economic and environmental consequences. Of course there are legitimate concerns over the difficulty and contradictions involved with starting a process of transition with new ideas in the old context. This means accepting a determined economic model, which in this case, is the cause of the current depletion of natural resources and social inequalities. With this in mind, a double movement is needed. First, there is a need to have a clear commitment to a series of principles which would guide decisions taken in Rio+20. Trade unions have worked on an initial list, including: 7 6
The respect for equity (between and within countries and between generations), Inclusion (giving opportunities to women, young people and for workers in the informal economy to reach a decent livelihood), Decent work promotion, A Just Transition, The satisfaction of human needs, and Non-speculation. Second, it is important to ensure that the process starts. The risk is too high to lose one more chance for changing economic thinking and action, and to see further suffering for people. But we should not repeat the mistakes from the past, and let the different dimensions of sustainable development be dealt with in silos. Rio+20 should be the moment for integration. It, therefore, needs to show how each action and each policy delivers for both workers and the environment, and also sow the seed for a broader, longer-term transformation of our societies. It is clear that such a transformation will not just be organized by governments. The mobilization must happen at all levels. But we should not underestimate the capacity of public policies to generate change, in particular in the field of green and decent jobs. This could the go on to inspire more actions at the community level. It is in this context that Rio+20 could play a role, and take concrete steps to change the direction of economic policy-making towards sustainable development. We need to encourage leaders at the Rio+20 Summit to commit to a socially and environmentally sound agenda. Negotiations will need to clarify the principles that the green economy should include, as well as respect elements of the Just Transition. But, of utmost importance, leaders must commit to action. Given this, a key outcome for Rio+20 would entail a country-by-country, self-identified target on decent and green jobs to be reached in the next 5-10 years, through environmentally-friendly investments amounting to about 2% of GDP. Such investment also needs to be coupled to decent work policies. Such strategies would require analyzing the potential for decent job creation of targeted investments in key economic sectors that would improve the environmental performance of the country, as well as the working conditions of workers in these sectors. Research is currently being undertaken on the potential for job creation in 12 countries in six targeted sectors. This is also being accompanied by research on a social policy package that of social and decent work policies which will aim to guarantee an improvement in the social outcomes of the initiative. This is being adapted to each country s context through a process of thorough consultation with trade unions, employers and actors of civil society. Our analysis so far indicates that investing of 2% of GDP could potentially create a total of 7.3 million to 9.8 million jobs per year in the countries and sectors analyzed. This equates to the creation of 100 employment opportunities per each million USD invested in the green interventions considered. It will be of particular importance to identify the policies which will ensure women and young workers have access to these jobs, which should not be considered as given. 8 What will this mean for workers in the developed and developed world? Both the developed and developing world will benefit from targeted decent employment creation and/or transformation through environmentally-sound investments and regulations, and a commitment to implement a package of social policies to ensure the decent work component. In wealthy countries, a job-centered agenda will be at odds with the neo-liberal adjustment policies. But, this must be addressed if we still want to have a chance to transform societies into sustainable and prosperous ones. It will also give a new impetus for more ambitious emission reduction commitments from the developed by bringing workers on board in the urgent transformation. In the developing world, realities are diverse. In the context of the emerging economies, a green/decent job pledge would help to build an alternative development model, with decent work at the center of development policies and with a better incorporation of natural resources in public planning, contributing to a long-term sustainable vision. In the poorest countries, in addition to bringing some short-term responses to the challenges 7
of youth unemployment, this agenda could also trigger changes in the structure of their economies. This would help in the transition from export commodity-led economies towards more added value in the supply chain, while supporting their efforts in changing global imbalances that today leave them outside of current development opportunities. CONCLUSIONS Generating millions of new green and decent jobs and transforming existing ones jobs could be one of the most positive consequences of a Rio+20 summit. This agenda could kick start the transition to the Green Economy, giving people hope about the positive impacts of a more sustainable society, particularly those suffering from poverty, precarious employment or unemployment. A green/decent job pledge would also be part of a solution to environmental and social imbalances created by the current unsustainable production mode. This would occur by driving a new kind of investments in developing countries whilst giving them access to a new model of development. REFERENCES 1 Examples of these early references to green recovery include UNEP Global Green New Deal, 2008; PERI Green Recovery Report, among others. 2 The Green Jobs Initiative is a partnership established in 2007 between the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the International Labor Organization (ILO), and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). The International Employers Organization (IEO) joined the Initiative in 2008. 3 Green Jobs Initiative (2008) Green Jobs: Towards decent work in a sustainable, low-carbon world (Nairobi: United Nations Environment Programme). 4 International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Green and Decent Jobs: making the green economy work for social progress, 2009. 5 International Labour Organisation, http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/decent-work-agenda/lang--en/index.htm 6 Rosemberg, Anabella, Building a Just Transition: The linkages between climate change and employment, in International Journal of Labour Research, 2010, Vol. 2, Issue 2, 2011. 7 A full list of the principles is available in the Workers and Trade Unions contribution to the Zero Draft. Other organizations, such as the Green Economy coalition have also developed a list of principles, very much in line with labour ones. 8 Sustainlabour, Green Jobs and Women workers, 2010; Kyle Gracey and Michael Davidson, Green Jobs for Youth: A preliminary analysis of youth in the green economy, 2011. 8