Virtual launch of the report "Decent Work in Nature-based Solutions 2024: Unlocking jobs through investment in skills and nature-based infrastructure" 

This event will serve to formally launch the report entitled Decent Work in Nature-based Solutions 2024: Unlocking jobs through investment in skills and nature-based infrastructure, produced and published in a collaboration between ILO, UNEP, and IUCN IN 2024.

Agenda

1. Welcome and introduction: Melissa De Kock, Deputy Director, UNEP-WCMC (Moderator)

2. Opening remarks: Moustapha Kamal Gueye, Director, Action Programme on Just Transitions, ILO

3. Presentation of report findings: Maikel-Lieuw-Kie-Song, Senior Technical Specialist, Employment-Intensive Investments, ILO

4. Case study presentation on Spain: Sonia Castañeda Rial, Deputy Director for the Green Transition, Fundación Biodiversidad F.S.P., Ministerio para la Transición Ecológica y el Reto Demográfico

5. Discussion and Q&A:

• Elsa Patricia Galarza Contreras, Director of the School of Public Management, Universidad de Pacifico and former Minister of the Environment, Peru
• Najma Mohamed, Head of Nautre-based solutions, UNEP-WCMC
• Catarina Faria Alves Silveira

6. Q&A with the audience

7. Summary and closing

About the report

Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are gaining global momentum as tools for addressing challenges such as land degradation, desertification, climate change, and biodiversity loss. But in addition to the environmental benefits that NbS can deliver, they can also provide a host of social and economic co-benefits that can make significant contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For example, NbS can create jobs in sectors like forestry, agriculture, construction and tourism, boosting local economies and contributing to poverty reduction. Increasing global attention on these other benefits is part of the key to scaling up investment in nature and closing the estimated US$400 billion annual nature financing gap, which will be necessary to meet global targets under the SDGs, Paris Climate agreement, and Global Biodiversity Framework.

The first report in the series, published in 2022, was the first major attempt to examine the nexus of NbS, jobs, and decent work, and this second report aims to highlight the impacts of NbS investments on decent job creation and the world of work. The report uses NbS investment data to estimate the current number of jobs in NbS, as well as potential future job creation if the nature financing gap is closed by 2030. It includes a “deep dive” on the potential for investments in nature-based infrastructure to create green and decent jobs in different sectors and fields. It also includes a chapter on the skills required for scaling up the use of NbS, and how to ensure that those needs are met in an equitable way, so that they contribute to just transition outcomes.

By providing a forum for discussion, the event will serve to provide policymakers with information that can be used to help make the case for scaling up investments in NbS, as a crucial component of meeting our global targets by 2030.

Read the report