Environment

Green jobs can help

Green jobs can create a large number of jobs quickly and help revive economies suffering from the impacts of the global economic crisis.

Pacific leaders and country delegates heard more about the potential of green jobs at the final day of the regional conference on the human face of the GEC session on green growth and climate change yesterday.

The International Labour Organization’s regional director Asia Pacific, Dr Sachiko Yamamoto, promoted the creation of more green jobs in the region during her presentation.

Yamamoto quoted Lord Nicholas Stern on climate change, ‘The two defining challenges of our century are managing climate change and overcoming poverty. And if we fail on one, we will fail on the other.’

“In the context of the Pacific Islands, the challenge posed by climate change is a problem of today,” she said.

The region will most directly experience the impacts of climate change which puts a burden on these small island countries to overcome them.

Given that environment related challenges such as water resource management, waste management, conservation and renewable energy need to be addressed, there is plenty of room for green jobs, she said.

Yamamoto says a policy shift toward a more sustainable future would include creating decent work through green jobs in the economy.

A sub-regional green growth (green economy) and green jobs initiative could be one of the ways to do just this.

Yamamoto suggests pilot projects to demonstrate the feasibility of the green economy approach could be carried out.

This could be done with support from the United Nations as part of the joint UN initiative in response to the GEC, she said.

Palau’s joint renewable energy fund project with UNDP must be praised as a leading example of efforts to reduce the dependency on fossil fuel use in power generation, said Yamamoto.

She says now is the time when the Pacific needs to enhance its resilience to climate change and other natural disaster impacts.

She said the region could move to a job-rich, low carbon, environmentally-friendly development that would contribute to economic growth.

Yamamoto believes the Green Jobs Initiative jointly launched in 2007 by the ILO, UNDP, the International Trade Union Federation and the International Employment Organization could help support regional efforts towards green growth.

There is call for a global action in shifting to a low-carbon, environment friendly economy that helps accelerate the job recovery, reduce social gaps and support development goals.

Yamamoto says the ‘world of work’ – governments and the civil society - need to work together towards the same goals and this may need new ways of engaging all parts of governments, employers and enterprises, workers, and the civil society, altogether, in an inclusive way where all can take part in the shift to green growth.

She says in Pacific island countries, tourism, food production, fisheries, renewable energy, and coastal management, are some of the main economic sectors with an important potential for fuelling a sustainable growth -- promoting a job centred recovery.

Cook Islands News, Port Vila

• Helen Greig