Welcome to this first online discussion forum on the Green Jobs-AP.

The topic for the discussion is "Policies, Programs and measures to promote Green Jobs". In the Background Note we have shared with you some information and thoughts on the topic, based on that note I would like to raise some issues for consideration to kick start the discussion.

The objective of this discussion forum would be to share knowledge and information about policies, programs and measures for Green Jobs that have been put in place in the region. Some examples of policies in countries in other regions could also be used as a reference. These experiences may be at the policy level or at the enterprise level.  Wide disparity exists between countries and economic sectors as well as in the speed with which this transition is taking place.  In order to facilitate more action, greater understanding needs to exist of the responses and approaches that are being developed.  Some matters to consider include:

  1. Policy responses – Green jobs have become central to the policy frameworks of many countries.  What platforms have been established or tools used to help integrate this issue into the existing policy arena and engage in the current climate change discussion? How have the labour agencies become involved to ensure that the social agenda is included in what has traditionally been an agenda focused predominantly on environmental issues? What are the challenges that have been encountered and how can they be addressed?

     2. Enterprise responses – What challenges are companies confronted with in their transition to more sustainable production methods? What tools and techniques are being adopted to address these challenges? What kind of support is being provided by governments to assist them?

We look forward to a very interesting discussion!

As my previous work on green jobs has been from an Australian perspective, I am interested in hearing participant’s views on the specific issues facing green jobs in different countries or sectors in the Asia-Pacific.  What are the greatest opportunities and challenges for the development of green jobs in your country/sector?

Opportunities might include effective social dialogue, strong social protection systems, labour market flexibility, appropriate incentives and policy settings for improved environmental performance…

Challenges might include skills gaps, need for support for workers, lack of social dialogue, limited understanding of impacts or the need for country-specific sectoral analysis, need for regulatory/policy action…

How could these opportunities be encouraged or these challenges overcome?  

Initiatives to promote value chain development typically help to  enhance the competitiveness of an economic sector but  can also be harnessed to contribute to improving the environmental impact of its enterprises and foster livelihood opportunities.

The recognition of such potential was at the heart of a demonstration project of the  ILO in India which is being carried out  in partnership with Development Alternatives and Tara Livelihoods Academy.  

“In India the demonstration project has been based on the adoption and pilot implementation of an integrated approach that draws upon the highly successful experience of ILO’s  participatory Value Chain Development (VCD) approach in Sri Lanka.

The core features of the approach lie in:

a) the integration of social and environmental goals into a local value chain development logic, which contributes to securing  stakeholders’ buy-in and commitment

b) the participatory nature of the whole methodology, which helps  to ensure strong stakeholders’ ownership and longer-term sustainability,

c) convergence of the project with government schemes and local initiatives and strengthening of collaborative relations among stakeholders, with resulting benefits in terms of local governance

The approach that has been pilot tested in the dairy industry of Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, opens up significant opportunities for replication in the same sector as well as introduction in other sectors.

The project involved a participatory value chain assessment to identify challenges and opportunities and potential points of action that would lead to the strengthening of the dairy sector and to improvements in its environmental and social impact.

Through workshops and subsequent meetings and consultations, local stakeholders identified a number of priority areas of action, and jointly with the project team, have started taking steps in the implementation. Areas of action include enhancement of local fodder supply, development of calf-rearing at the local level, promotion of biogas technology among dairy farmers, support measures for profitable use and marketing of animal waste, entrepreneurship training for dung fuel producers.

At the general level, in order to enhance dialogue and collaboration and to provide direction to the various initiatives, a steering group for the development of the dairy sector has been established under the leadership of local government authorities and the dairy farmers association, and with membership that extends to trade unions, local universities, and banks. This collaboration helps key stakeholders to achieve their mandates and improve the effectiveness of the services while benefiting many other players involve in the value chain.

The  experience of Jabalpur showcases an integrated approach to promote green jobs and just transition principles at the local level that ensures stakeholders’ ownership and leverages on synergies with government schemes and other initiatives for a longer-term sustainability.” (From the project brief on the India demonstration programme).

I would like to address the second of these questions, related to enterprise responses.  Why will companies respond?  Because, being run by business people, it is in their best interest.  They will green their companies, clean up their operations, start thinking about waste and impact on the environment because to do so makes them money.  

And not with a payback of 5 years or 40 months – but that it makes them money this year or maybe next.  So a primary challenge – for us interested in moving forward with greening, boosting green jobs in the existing economy – for here I am talking about the companies already operating, often in non-green ways – is making it easy for these companies to know how to make money by greening.

That is a challenge.  Many companies consider environmental improvement of their operations a cost, not a benefit, something they would do because it is the ‘right thing to do’.  But won’t do because it is money out of their and their family’s pocket.  With hard pressed suppliers into global supply chains, or small SMEs trying to produce for a budget-focused local consumer, doing something that costs them money because it is the right thing will not be a very successful argument.

Of course, many of our projects are doing things along these lines, focused on the business case.  But often these take a complicated, longer term and ROI based approach.  That might work for HP or Toyota – which also have to factor in their societal legitimacy, commitments made to shareholders and other stakeholders – but it won’t work for their third tier supplier, someone doing electroplating for their supplier’s supplier’s supplier.  For this company, way down the chain or off the beaten path, the solutions need to be clear, easy, putting money in the bank from the starting point.

From experience I think those solutions are out there.  Sure, there will always be money to be made by dumping toxins into the drainage ditch late at night, and for that we need regulation, education, penalties and monitoring.  As well as a more informed community that can spread a culture of non-acceptance.  But what we really need are simple solutions converted into easily distributed guides and tools, backed by service providers – whether private or government – who understand these solutions and can help inform and assist companies.

Where is the central website that provides such tools?  They are all over the place, in varying degrees of user-friendliness.  They are locked in paper reports and proprietary training materials.  It seems we need a Wikipedia on greening, a open-source place to go and find anything – whether it is how to ensure fire safety in a garment factory to how to involve workers in addressing absenteeism to how to reduce emissions of heavy metals in a plating factory.  In each case, the ‘hows’ should be linked to economic ‘whys’ – because that is what will drive change at the enterprise level.

Related to the first issue, that of government and policy responses, I would wonder if we aren’t jumping into operational waters before considering the issue of vision and resulting strategies.  The questions asked above are “What platforms have been established or tools used to help integrate this issue into the existing policy arena and engage in the current climate change discussion? How have the labour agencies become involved to ensure that the social agenda is included …”

But I would ask first of all, what examples are there of vision – at the national, provincial or local level – that have driven effective change, including the development of platforms?  When consider Asia, which government has a vision, one that understands the integrated nature of competitive economies, linking competitiveness and economic success to good labour and environmental practices?  Which countries would we want to hold up as templates for others?

A vision is central to seeing change on a broader scale.  A societal vision, whether that society is a country like Singapore or a province or a city like Faridabad, outside Delhi, has great potential to impact large numbers.  If we think of the quality movement in Japan post WWII, this led to a manufacturing powerhouse that was built from the ashes of war.  If we think of education in the US in the fifties and sixties, the vision was of broad access to all levels of society – a vision that was then backed up by policies, programmes, ‘tools’ that allowed the vision to become reality.

Perhaps we should be looking to help countries establish their own triple bottom line, vision-based movements – which recognize successful companies treat workers as a key asset, that manufacturing can be optimized by reducing waste and pollutants, that being clean results in more business; recognizing that economic success depends on a partnership between the companies, its workers and its environment.

Labour agencies and social partners organisations have a crucial role to play in the move towards a green and socially viable economy. There are however training and capacity building needs to be addressed for a more effective participation of these actors in relevant national debates and policy-making processes, as emerging from different assessments and gatherings.    

In response to these needs, the International Training Centre of the ILO has been offering open and customized courses that provide notions, cases and practical tools for tackling the social and employment effects of environmental challenges. They are designed to help participants in shaping green jobs strategies and actions at the local and national level.

Training and knowledge-sharing events take place in Turin, Italy and in the regions. With regard to the Asia and The Pacific region, courses were organised in 2010 in New Delhi and Bangkok, and new activities are being planned.    

We stand ready to discuss appropriate training solutions with interested parties.    

Valter Nebuloni
ITC-ILO Turin
greenjobs@itcilo.org

I would like to comment on the  “sequence” issue as raised by Mr. Bodwell, that is, which should come first -  the “visioning” aspect  or the “operational ” part in promoting green jobs..  Based on my inception research (2007)  on green jobs in the Philippines, the “operational ” was as important as the “visioning” especially that green jobs was then considered a “frontier” issue.

I found out in the course of my work that the “conceptual deficit” on green jobs cannot be addressed “conceptually.”  We had to look for “tangible’’ examples of what people would consider as success in practical terms –and reduce it to something categorical so that it could be understood and grasped. In other words, one had to explain the “vision” using an “operational” example.

The operational examples were not hard to find because “green”, while not actually alien in practice, was alien in concept. At the enterprise level, they were practicing green all around but it was not just labeled as such. According to employers, there were no words for it then around  ten years ago when  “greening” started for some of them. So the green jobs initiative  was not really all about coming up with a vision as much as it was about the finding the right words to describe the practice.

Also, in my organization, it took three years of “selling” (thru capacity building, research, networking and advocacy activities)  before  it took root and was recognized as a legitimate concern.  The difficulty was tied to the introduction of the environmental element into the traditional labor & employment  regulatory framework which rendered it peculiar to most. Again, this was helped by thinking “programmatic” & “operational” as line agencies had to re-imagine their tasks given the green perspective.  

However, riding on the broad wings of the global climate change imperative, the issue of green jobs has now acquired legitimacy nationwide as we see it genuinely mainstreamed into the Philippine Development Plan for 2011 to 2016 and the Labor and Employment Plan for the same period.  Platform and policy pronouncements on labor & employment in said documents are explicit in declaring “…greener businesses and green jobs as the new innovation frontiers…” 

We are now in the process of doing our Results Matrix based on the Medium-Term Plans and green jobs are definitely part of the agenda including committed resources for its implementation. In August of this year, the Greener Business, Green Jobs : the 1^st Philippine Conference shall be held in partnership with ILO, to deepen our  conversations on green jobs and to engage key stakeholders on prevalent expectations and concerns on climate change and employment.

In the same event, a  Green Jobs Portal & a Green Jobs Resource Desk are expected to be launched as we continue to build our knowledge assets to create shifts in awareness, facilitate collaboration and fortify industries and communities pursuing social-environmental transformation.

Expectedly, countries will pursue different green jobs track so that the  idea of a template as contemplated, given diversity in initial endowments, resources, and political leadership to include carbon emissions of countries, may at best,  be limiting .

I believe that for a vision to be properly framed, it has to be experienced first (at least by a critical mass of practioners) before it can be fully articulated and made explicit and subsequently embraced as a collective priority. More so, experience, especially if a first, is really  about  “jumping the waters.”

Hi All,

Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to share my thoughts on the questions posed here. 

First, I think it is important to emphasize the sui generis nature of green jobs.  By integrating social, environmental and economic objectives, green jobs can be seen as providing a working framework for policy coherence on sustainable development. 

In this connection, interministerial coordination mechanisms can play a key role in strengthening labour market governance for green jobs and skills.  The Republic of Korea’s Presidential Committee on Green Growth, and Cambodia’s National Green Growth Secretariat serve as two notable examples.

With regard to Cambodia, both the Ministry of Labour & Vocational Training, and the Ministry of Environment signaled their intention to work together at the ILO’s National Awareness Raising Workshop on Green Jobs held in March.  Occupational safety and health was identified as an area of shared interest, where co-operation would be beneficial for all social partners.   

This is significant, as it invites a shift away from the traditional understanding of environmental protection as a separate policy domain, and towards a more ecological view, where human and environmental health are seen as mutually dependent and complementary.

However, it is also difficult to quantify at the enterprise level, namely because environmental and labour issues cannot always be approached the same way.  For instance, as opposed to international labour standards, there is no internationally agreed criterion of environmental sustainability.  As has already been discussed, the matter becomes further complicated by the fact that various activities are divided across the supply chain.  

Some enterprises have made efforts to turn these challenges into opportunities by focusing on improving stakeholder relations.  Taking the global garment industry as an example, leading international retailers have joined together to develop an “eco-index”— a standardized metric that upon implementation will be used to rate the social and environmental impacts of manufacturing and distribution processes. 

Accordingly, governments of major garment-exporting countries in the region, such as Cambodia, are presented a policy window through which fiscal incentives can be extended to encourage manufacturers to practice more sustainable production and consumption.

Please visit the following links for more information… I hope these are useful for knowledge-sharing purposes.

http://greengrowthleaders.org/

http://www.open-sustainability.org/

http://www.ifc.org/ifcext/sustainability.nsf/Content/EHSGuidelines

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/business/01apparel.html

Thank you to the contributions thus far. Some interesting and important points have been raised. 

Firstly, with regard to the concept of green jobs, it’s been pointed out accurately that there is no “one size fits all” definition but rather that there are definitions and frameworks that can be used to help guide the process of determining what could be considered a green job in one country.  The lack of standardised definitions, while posing a challenge, has not impeded advances on this topic. A number of countries have examined the issue of what green jobs are in their particular context and several have even attempted to quantify the current and potential numbers of jobs that exist.  Clearly more work is required in this area but a starting step is the sharing of practices and experiences.  In this discussion we have briefly touched upon the examples from India, Korea and Cambodia. 

For those who have yet to contribute, it would be very helpful to hear more about the experiences of how this issue is being addressed in your own country.  In particular, experiences on how the Ministry of Labour is interacting with the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Finance with regard to environmental matters would be of interest.  For example, in India, China and Bangladesh, national consultations and in some cases multistakeholder tasforces have been established to discuss the issue of climate change and green jobs and to help in joint planning and coordinated policy responses. How have these worked in practice? What approaches are being adopted to overcome the challenges of duplication and the battle over limited resources etc.?

The need for more information sharing is also true of the examples of how companies are addressing greening issues.  Cost and competitiveness are clear drivers when it comes to corporate practices.  At the same time, the need to embrace environmental concerns as part of operational strategies and practices offers opportunities for innovation not only on the technical front but also with respect to the engagement of workers. It would be helpful to hear how companies are embracing this opportunity and the role that workers are playing in the process.

The impetus behind the establishment of this Community of Practice was the recognition of the need for a central knowledge repository and increased demands for sharing of tools, good practices and experiences.  With one week left in our discussion, I look forward to hearing more from you all. Feel free to pass the link to this discussion to anyone else you think might be interested in contributing.

Hello all,

Thank you for this opportunity to share my experience though I am still new to this topic and may have a small experience on the ground to contribute.

For Thailand, I know that two years ago, the Ministry of Labour (Department of Skills Development) had started a project called something like " New Seedling Vocational Project" for the unemployed, laid off workers, and new graduates. In particular, the Thai Hotels Association was responsible for coordinating the organization of trainings for the hotel sector. Several courses were offered for training on different languages, service quality, housekeeping, food and beverages, housekeeping, and maintenance. Under the maintenance course, topics on air conditioning maintenance, IT system, energy efficiency and cost control, and the creation of green engineer was offered for 5 days. The green enginer in particular has been introduced by are a representative from the engineer club of Thailand, who is now trying to work with a professor at Mahidol University to come up with 'green engineer' courses for undergraduate students. The engineer who delivers the training is the chief engineer of Queens Park Hotel in Bangkok. (info: http://www.tonkla-archeep.com/about.php; http://www.thaihotels.org/tha/tha_training.php)

Small initiatives from the Department of Environmental Quality Promotion, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment have initiated a project this year for new environmental innovators targeting youth on technological innovations or methodologies to solve environmental issues.

Apart from greening existing industries, Initiatives to form new social enterprise to tackle social and environmental issues have also emerged. Last year, under the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, an autonomous state agency, started a project on social enterprise for new social entrepreneurs (small and medium enterprises) on marketing strategies, business plan, financial assistance etc. They are also continuing this year in partnership with the British Council in the project called E-idea. (http://www.tseo.or.th/).

I had the opportunity to work in one of these social enterprise called KOKOBOARD, a bio-composite board manufacturer or boards made of agricultural wastes. Operating more than 3 years, it is still a small enterprise  with less than 15 workers. It started with a cooperation with the Royal Forestry Department of Thailand with the purpose to add value to agricultural wastes and reduce deforestation. The enterprise creates jobs for locals in rice-producing Pathumthani Province, an area with vast opportunity for waste like rice straw and husk. It is interesting that the skills required in the factory is very simple, but requires more labor work in the processing. But, for machine mataintenance, there is only one senior engineer in the team who has the knowledge of how the machine works and its maintenance as he is the inventor. A young factory supervisor is  'learning on the job' of how the machine works. The enterprise has faced labour shortage and very high turn over rate, because of better offer in the neighbouring factories. (http://www.kokoboard.com/)

Thank you.

Hi,

I am sharing some information related to green jobs initiative in Pakistan. We are at present looking at polices and measures to promote green jobs in the country.

Pakistan has recently pledged to promote low-carbon, green growth by joining the Climate Neutral Network (CN Net) - an initiative led by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) for promoting global action to de-carbonize our economies and societies. Sectors such as agriculture, construction and alternate energy are gaining importance with regards green jobs and decent employment.  Studies have been conducted, by ILO Office in Pakistan, to look at the prospects of green jobs in these three sectors. Recommendations for Pakistan, arising from these studies include:

1.      Unsustainable business practices are still prevalent and often remain more profitable. Short-term pressures of shareholders and financial markets are not easily overcome. The early adopters of green business practices have to contend with companies, manufacturers and retailers that command consumer loyalty through low prices achieved on the back of “externalized” costs. The right approach striking the right balance between government and private sector action, financing a green jobs agenda, developing worker skills, and ensuring a just transition can move the transition to sustainability forward at a much faster pace;

 

2.      A green jobs scenario will require policy interventions to overcome a series of formidable obstacles in traditional agriculture. Moreover, serious decent work deficits exist both for smallholders and for a large portion of the waged agricultural workforce. But the number of people making part or all of their living from agriculture is still enormous and will remain so for some decades, so any successful attempts to spread green and decent work in this sector will have a massive quantitative impact on the national green jobs picture; and

 

3.      Attention also needs to be given to disaggregating data on the basis of gender in order to ensure that there is equality of opportunity for women and men for green jobs in the green agriculture sector.

 

 

Thank you.

In closing this discussion forum on policies, programs and measures for green jobs that have been put into place, I’d like to thank everyone for their contributions. It is clear that at the policy level, a number of countries have already taken concrete actions in this regard for example by incorporating green jobs and broader environmental issues as part of national development plans .  At the enterprise level, economic s (ie. the need for a business case) and competitiveness are still the primary drivers of action; examples exist, particularly of larger companies and their managers who are attempting to be visionaries and leaders, but more is needed.  Challenges remain with the availability of tools and training materials and in this regard more dissemination and sharing of experiences is need. Similarly, it is clear that increased focus needs to be given to better understanding the impact of climate change on employment.  Which sectors are going to be affected greatest? Which groups are most vulnerable? How can societies prepare for the expected changes? Different approaches exist with regard to modelling the impacts of climate change on employment and perhaps a future discussion forum could look at this issue in greater depth particularly as it is linked to the need for greater capacity building and training. What is clear is that the topic of green jobs, climate change, environmental issues more broadly and the linkage with the world of work is a huge area of opportunity and one which we shall be working on well into the future.  I encourage you all to continue to be part of the debate and most importantly part of the solution.  Thank you.