Employment and labour market implications of climate change

This paper discusses the implications for employment and decent work of climate change. It focuses on the search for ways to combine growth, the reduction of poverty and inclusive development with a much reduced emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) and measures to adapt to climate changes that are already under way. The framework for this discussion is the concept of sustainable development agreed at the Johannesburg Summit in 2002, which assumed “a collective responsibility to advance and strengthen the interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars of sustainable development – economic development, social development, and environmental protection”. The paper builds on the discussion of the issue in the Working Party on the Social Dimension of Globalization in the November 2007 session of the Governing Body.