UN: Tackling Climate Change Will Boost - Not Destroy - Jobs

A UN report is hailed as crucial to overcoming global resistance from the labour movement, which for many years opposed the Kyoto agreement amid fears that members would lose their jobs

by Juliette Jowit

Far from destroying jobs, tackling climate change will boost employment, claims a major new report published today by the UN and the international labour movement.

The Green Jobs study goes even further than the British government's Stern report in 2006, which urged countries to invest money in reducing emissions and adapting to climate change to avoid much greater costs later.

The latest report has been hailed as crucial to overcoming global resistance from the labour movement, which for many years opposed the Kyoto agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions amid fears that members would lose their jobs.

"That was not something I'm particularly proud of," said Guy Ryder, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), who said the movement had since accepted the United Nations-recommended emissions cut of 80% by 2050.

"This is a major turnaround," said Ryder. "It's not perhaps because we have become wiser, it's because we have managed to integrate the notion of action against climate change with the green job agenda. And what this report shows is it's perfectly possible to reconcile those two interests in a way that doesn't threaten worker interests but actually promotes them in the long term. The biggest threat to the jobs and livelihoods of our members in future is to do nothing."

However Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN environment programme (UNEP), called on governments to do more to support the emerging industries - comparing the need for intervention to that offered by the US and other governments to rescue failing financial institutions. (Watch the press conference here.)

"Imagine for a moment if some of those stimulus packages could be targeted towards not maintaining and sustaining the old economy of the 20th century but investing in the new economy of the 21st century," said Steiner. "Millions of jobs, millions of enterprises and above all millions of opportunities for new entrants in the global economy."

The ITUC, the International Labour Office (ILO), the International Organisation of Empoyers, and UNEP commissioned the Worldwatch Institute and Cornell University to conduct a study into how many jobs would be created in the "green economy".

The report focused on the key areas considered to have the most potential to make improvements: energy supply, energy efficiency, transport, "basic" industries (such as iron and steel, aluminium, cement, paper and pulp), along with recycling, agriculture and forestry.

The report said "millions" of new jobs would be created, based on other studies forecasting that the global market for environmental services and products would double by 2020, and reports that "clean technology" was booming.

"New jobs will be created, others will be adapted, and some will fade out," said Juan Somavia, the ILO director general.

Jobs would be lost in some fossil fuel-intensive industries like steel and cement, but more jobs would be created than lost in switching from fossil fuel to renewable energy generation and from mass car use to more public transport, said Stephen Pursey, the ILO policy director.

The report did not estimate a total figure because all jobs would have to become "greener", but "on current performance it looks like there will be more opportunities than losses," said Pursey.

Critics have warned that more labour-intensive "green" industries could be a less efficient way of producing goods and services than those they replaced. But such measures of wealth did not take account of the harm caused by pollution and other impacts such as climate change, said Pursey. "Can we shift to a way of capturing more accurately the things we aspire to, [such as] cleaner, less polluted cities to live in," he added.

The most important condition for benefiting from the green economy was clear public policies and incentives, said the report, which cited the examples of government support for energy efficiency in Germany and a scheme to install 1m solar panels in rural villages in Bangladesh, supported by the not-for-profit organisation Grameen Bank.

However the report also called for better working conditions for people in some sectors of the green economy, such as waste disposal and recycling. To help the poorest countries and most vulnerable workers benefit, governments needed to diversify economies, ensure social protection and train workers for new skills, said Somavia.

"Building a low carbon economy is not only about technologies or finances, it's about peoples and societies, it's about a cultural change to greater environmental consciousness and opportunities for decent work, so essentially it's about leadership - in government, in business, in trade unions, in local authorities, in international organisations, in NGOs [non governmental organisations], but particularly in the political world," said Somavia.