South-South cooperation
20 November 2012
South Africa has become a success story when it comes to creating jobs and protecting the environment through its Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP). Many other countries in the global south are also benefitting from similar programmes.
Article
31 August 2012
Decades of environmental degradation have left Haiti on the brink, posing a serious threat to lives and livelihoods. Training programmes are helping Haitians move towards a greener, more sustainable economy.
Article
22 June 2012
Solar home systems can be an alternative source of energy in developing countries like Bangladesh, where half of the population, or about 85 million people, lack access to grid-based electricity. Solar panels bring clean energy and green jobs to rural areas, an issue that is high on the Rio+20 agenda. Allan Dow reports.
Article
21 June 2012
The transition towards a greener economy is expected to affect about half of the global labour force or roughly 1.5 billion people. This means changes in terms of job types and workers’ skills – a topic that is high on the Rio+20 agenda.
Article
19 June 2012
By their very nature, cooperatives can balance economic, environmental, and social needs. The ILO will be showcasing some of its successful experiences in this field at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). One of them involves more than 200,000 coffee producers and almost 200 cooperatives in Ethiopia.
Article
15 May 2012
At a time when youth unemployment has reached alarming levels, governments are urgently seeking ways to tackle the crisis and defuse the potential time bomb of an increasingly disheartened and angry generation. Journalist Patrick Moser reports.
Article
08 November 2011
There are many stories from the field about how countries have dealt with the challenge of developing skills for green jobs. Here is a sampling of some of these stories, providing a representative overview of the types of projects and initiatives underway around the world today. More of these stories can be found in the new study entitled Skills for Green Jobs: A Global View.
Feature story
07 November 2011
Developing new skills or upgrading existing ones is the key to unlocking the potential of green jobs. The Green Jobs Initiative of the ILO, the UN Environmental Programme, the International Organisation of Employers (IOE) and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has been working to turn this potential into reality since 2008. ILO News talks to Olga Strietska-Ilina, Skills Development Specialist with ILO’s Skills and Employability Department, about a new landmark ILO study developed together with the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) on skill needs for greener economies.
Article
16 September 2011
The ILO, through the Joint Program for strengthening the Banana value chain by Growing Inclusive Markets, invited a delegation of fifteen technicians and producers of bananas from the Dominican Republic to visit Costa Rica to learn about the experience of this country's banana sector in plastic recycling as well as environmental and labor practices.
Article
15 February 2011
Yang Shumbo, a Chinese electronic sciences student invented a device to save electricity. He developed this into a business under a pilot project of the Greener Business Option (GBO), an ILO Green Jobs Programme initiative. GBO aims to encourage entrepreneurship in green businesses among young people. Report from Chengdu, China, by Satoshi Sasaki, Specialist on Enterprise Development and Job Creation, ILO Beijing and Vincent Jugault, Senior Specialist in Environment and Decent Work, ILO Bangkok.