Context
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During an event to mark World Environment Day, Prime Minister, mentioned India’s efforts to create ‘green jobs’
What are Green jobs?
- ‘Green jobs’ refer to a class of jobs that directly have a positive impact on the planet, and contribute to the overall environmental welfare. Jobs involving renewable energy, conservation of resources, ensuring energy efficient means are categorised under the same.
Photo Credit: The New Indian Express - In all, they’re aimed at reducing the negative environmental impact of economic sectors and furthering the process of creating a low-carbon economy.
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The idea behind a low-carbon economy or decarbonisation is fairly simple — it is about maintaining a sustainable economy, one that doesn’t lead to vast emissions of greenhouse gasses, especially carbon dioxide.
Skill Council for Green Jobs
- The Skill Council for Green Jobs was launched by the Union government on October 1, 2015.
- Aligned to the National Skill Development Missions, it was set up to be a not-for-profit, independent, industry-led initiative.
- Promoted by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the council aims to help manufacturers and other service providers in India’s ‘green business’ sector to implement industry-led, collaborative skills push the country on the path to truly realising the real potential and significance of ‘green jobs’.
- According to the Skill Council for Green Jobs, awareness and training individuals regarding green jobs skills will ensure limiting greenhouse gas emissions, minimising waste and pollution, protect and restore ecosystems, support adaptation to the effects of climate change.
Scenario across the world
- The United Nations Environment Programme’s 2019 Emissions Gap report dictates that it is essential for greenhouse gas emissions to reduce by 7.6% per annum between the years 2020 to 2030 in order to reach the target that was set during the Paris Agreement.
- Failing to meet the same would consequently result in a failure to effectively combat global warming. Consequently, a decarbonised economy plays a key role in ensuring a greener, safer, healthier and more sustainable planet to inhabit. Globally too, there have been multiple initiatives to further the ‘green jobs’ sector.
- The International Labour Organisation, the International Trade Union Confederation, the United Nations Environment Programme and the International Employers Organisation collectively launched the Green Jobs Initiative in 2008, aimed at bettering placements, training and creating opportunities for individuals to work in ‘green jobs’.
- The United Kingdom is likely to have nearly 694,000 green jobs by the year 2030, projecting an overall 11% increase per year in the green economy.
- According to Eliot Whittington, the director of policy at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), the move to normalising ‘green jobs’ and making them an unquestionable, inherent part of the economy can only be achieved through systemic shifts, where multiple organisations work in harmony and that isolated innovations do not go a long way in ensuring the same.
The way forward
- According to the ILO, India moving to a green economy by the next decade would alone create about 3 million jobs in the renewable energy sector.
- The renewable energy sector created about 47,000 new jobs in 2017 accounting for a 12% increase in just the span of a year.
- For India ‘green jobs’ can prove immensely useful to the country with sectors like renewable energy, waste management, green transport and urban farming all having great potential to employ a trained workforce.
- An integrated, systematic approach, experts believe, is crucial to ensuring this.
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