Moustapha Kamal Gueye, Head of the ILO Green Jobs Programme, participated in a conference organized by ACLVB-CGSLB on the just transition.
“First, we need to understand the nature and scale of the impacts of climate change and policy responses on jobs,” said Mr Gueye. Between 2000 and 2015, annually, 23 million working life years have been lost due to disasters induced or enhanced by human activity. Countries in Asia and the Pacific have been amongst the most affected.
ILO projections based on a conservative scenario of a global temperature rise of 1.5°C by the end of this century suggest that in 2030, 2.2 per cent of total working hours worldwide will be lost because of higher temperatures, a loss equivalent to 80 million full-time jobs.
Secondly, while achieving sustainability in the energy sector is expected to create 18 million net new jobs, skills shortages are becoming an obstacle in realizing this potential. Massive investments will be needed to train workers and equip them with the skills required for those jobs.
The UN Climate Action for Jobs initiative provides a roadmap for ensuring that people’s jobs and well-being are at the centre of the transition to a carbon-neutral economy. It urges countries to formulate national plans for a just ecological transition, creating decent work as well as green jobs, and taking specific actions. These include designing innovative social protection policies to protect workers and vulnerable groups in the context of more ambitious climate adaptation and mitigation strategies, and implementing skills development and upgrading measures to enable transitions in labour markets and the creation of green jobs. “The support of the private sector will be crucial,” Mr Gueye pointed out.
As a result of the UN Climate Action Summit, 46 countries have committed to formulate national plans for a just transition, including 14 EU Member States: Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden and the UK.
