By
Clive Mutame Siachiyako
The story of Harrison Musonda is a
relative rags-to-riches story with a difference: it is the rags and other
household waste that are now bringing Musonda prosperity, and helping the
community at the same time. Musonda earns a living by selling litter and
recyclable waste as part of the highly successful Manja Pamodzi project, a
community-based initiative that has seen parts of Lusaka where the project has
been launched cleared of refuse, and recycled material for cash.
Dealing in other people’s household
waste has always earned the 30-year-old Musonda enough to survive, but since
becoming an aggregator for the Zambian Breweries-supported Manja Pamodzi
initiative, he has enjoyed a noticeable improvement in his standard of living. His
role involves buying litter in bulk from collectors so that he can then process
the discarded material into bundles to be sold on to Manja Pamodzi. Thereafter;
companies specialising in processing of recyclable materials buy the solid
waste and turn into useable material such as tissues and egg trays. It is
difficult to believe that Musonda at one time had to survive on picking waste
from the dump site; now these days are long gone.
“Before engaging with the Manja Pamodzi
project, I met up with some business people who would buy plastic litter in
bulk. They would give us K50 a time. Later, I realised that there is value in
this waste-picking business. I started selling a kilo for 30 ngwee. I would
make between K300 and K500 weekly and I started saving,” he says. As fate may
have it, in March 2014 he met with some consultants who were conducting
feasibility studies on recyclable material. This was a turning point in his
life as it meant he could finally move on from his Chunga dumping ground
litter-picking business. In 2015, the team came back for the Manja Pamodzi
project with Zambian Breweries. That was the moment when it dawned on him that
becoming an aggregator was a way out of the poverty trap which he was in danger
of falling into. “I realised that I could engage others and now have about 60
collectors that pick recyclable litter in Chawama, Ngombe and other places in
Lusaka.”
Manja Pamodzi initiative is supported
by Zambian Breweries with the aim of the environmental clean-up and recycling
project is to minimise litter that can block drainage system and give rise to
disease such as cholera and typhoid, especially during the rainy season. The
project is generating enterprise development opportunities and thus alleviating
poverty. It is also giving chance to community members to create their own
businesses.
The collectors are identified through
environmental education campaigns with the emphasis on recycling. The
collectors gather polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles, cardboard and other
recyclable materials from target areas in their communities. “I have grown up
in a hard situation. I was a bin scavenger. I was getting food to survive by
God’s Grace. Then I started visiting the Chunga dumping site, but I was also
determined to work hard and make it in life. When I look at litter, I see
business: I see money. I started with I was familiar with…garbage.” Musonda
hopes he can inspire schoolchildren to keep their environment clean and provide
leadership in creating green jobs.
Why green jobs?
Green jobs
hold the promise that humankind will be able to respond effectively and fairly
to the following two defining challenges of the 21st century. First is averting
dangerous and potentially unmanageable climate change and protecting the
natural environment which supports life on earth. Environmental degradation,
including the pollution of water, land and air, the irreversible loss of
biodiversity, the deterioration and exhaustion of natural resources such as
water, fertile agricultural land, and fish, is one of the most serious threats
facing economic and broader sustainable development. The environmental and
health costs already often outweigh the gains from the economic activity
causing the damage. Such degradation will be exacerbated
by the impacts of climate change, which are already felt globally.
In the
medium- to long-term, projected climate change will lead to the serious
disruption of economic and social activity in many sectors worldwide.
Scientific scenarios for avoiding dangerous and possibly unmanageable climate
change require global emissions of greenhouse gases to peak over the next 10-15
years and then to decline by half until the middle of the century. Stabilising
the climate will require a rapid shift to a low carbon world economy.
The second challenge
is providing decent work and thus the prospect of wellbeing and dignity for
all. Decent work is defined as opportunities for women and men to obtain decent
and productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human
dignity. Decent work sums up the aspirations of people in their working lives:
opportunity and income; rights, voice and recognition; family stability and
personal development; for fairness and gender equality. Ultimately these
various dimensions of decent work underpin peace in communities and society.
Decent work is central to efforts to reduce poverty, and is a means for
achieving equitable, inclusive and sustainable development.
The social
challenge of the working poor largely looms, with an estimated 1.3 billion
people [over 40 % of the global workforce, and their dependants] live in
poverty and insecurity because their earnings are too low and they are
relegated to the informal economy. There are 190 million unemployed and tens of
millions of young job-seekers cannot find a place in society. The above
challenges are closely linked and need to be addressed together. Green jobs are
crucial to meeting both simultaneously. Making economic growth and development
compatible with stabilising the climate and with a sustainable environmental
footprint will require a drastic shift towards clean development and green,
low-carbon economies worldwide.
The green
jobs and the decent work agendas are mutually supportive and include several
interdependent elements, such as rights at work, more and better jobs for women
and men, social protection measures, labour protection – in terms of
occupational safety and health, migration, laws on wages and working time – and
social dialogue, including freedom of association and collective bargaining.
What kind of jobs are green jobs?
Green jobs
reduce the environmental impact of enterprises and economic sectors, ultimately
to sustainable levels. Green jobs are found in many sectors of the economy from
energy supply to recycling [e.g. the case of Musonda above] and from
agriculture and construction to transportation. They help to cut energy, raw
materials and water consumption through high-efficiency strategies, to
decarbonise the economy and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, to minimise or
avoid altogether all forms of waste and pollution, to protect and restore
ecosystems and biodiversity.
How good are they?
Green jobs do
not automatically constitute decent work. Many current recycling jobs, for
instance, recover raw material and thus help to alleviate pressure on natural
resources, but apply a process which is often dirty, dangerous and difficult,
causing significant damage to the environment and to human health. Employment
in this industry in developing countries tends to be precarious and incomes are
low. If green jobs are to be a bridge to a truly sustainable future, then they
also must be decent jobs. Decent, green jobs effectively link Sustainable
Development Goals that focus on poverty reduction, protecting the environment, and
make them mutually supportive rather than conflicting.
Who takes green jobs?
Skills
shortages have emerged as a constraint on the greening of economies in
industrial and developing countries alike. This is why developing the right
skills to ease just transitions is a crucial element in the process. In
response to the urgency for greener economies, young persons and workers with
the right skills and the ability to learn new ones will be prepared to shift
out of declining and into emerging industries.
Technical and
vocational education and training (TVET) should also be revised not only to
provide skills needed for an occupation to be green: green skills but also
skills necessary to adapt professionals to changes and new technologies in
order to sustain themselves. Greening TVET is described as “prepares learners
for fields of work and business such as construction, waste management and
agriculture, many of which consume enormous amounts of energy, raw materials
and water. Green TVET helps develop skilled workers who have knowledge of (and
commitment to) sustainable development, as well as the requisite technical
knowledge. Greening TVET is crucial for making a transition from energy and
emissions-intensive economies to cleaner and greener production and service
patterns”.
TVET goes
beyond promoting skills development for employability. It empowers young people
and adults to develop skills for work and life. Green TVET therefore means more
than developing technical skills for green employment (such as eco-tourism,
renewable energy and recycling). It also means developing ‘soft’ green skills
such as enhancing problem-solving skills in everyday situations (life skills
education), education for sustainable consumption and lifestyles, and
entrepreneurial learning. Green TVET ensures that all workers are able to play
appropriate roles, both in the workplace and the broader community, by
contributing to environmental, economic and social sustainability.
The roadmap
for greening TVET necessitates the inclusion of subjects related with
sustainability and thus revision of the existing curricula promoting the use of
cleaner energies, waste management, green technologies, developing skills to
cope with new technologies, promoting entrepreneurship and innovative way of
thinking, matching theory and practice through work based
learning/apprenticeship, emphasizing the needs of the sector.
Just transition to green jobs
Available
studies of labour-market dynamics both for sectors and entire economies,
suggest that there will be more jobs in green economies. Not everybody will
gain from such a change, however. The typically positive job balance from
greening an economy is the result of major shifts often within sectors. While
some groups and regions are gaining significantly, others incur substantial
losses. Therefore, just transitions are needed both for those affected by the
transformation to a green economy and also for those having to adapt to climate
change.
The
industries hardest hit by climate change and those most in need of adaptation
are those in developing countries that have historically contributed least to
the emissions causing global warming.
The overall
balance of available jobs will depend on those created and lost in the sector
concerned, such as energy, transport or buildings. Government assistance to
both workers and enterprises, including social protection and active
labour-market policies, will be a necessary complement in many cases.
Meaningful social dialogue will be essential to ease tensions and to arrive at
effective cost-sharing and resource allocation.
Vicious to virtuous circle
Inadequate
skills development can be the cause of a vicious downward circle of low skills,
low productivity and low income. If quality education and training is
unavailable, the working poor will remain trapped in low-skilled,
low-productive and, as a result, low-wage jobs. Many of these jobs can be found
in informal economies in developing countries. In developed economies,
disadvantaged groups such as migrant workers, people with disabilities or older
workers can suffer similar constraints. Lacking access to skills development
excludes workers from participating in economic growth and social development.
However, more
and better skills can turn this vicious circle into a virtuous circle, leading
to better and more productive jobs. Improved and more widely available skills
enable individuals, enterprises and society to innovate, adopt new
technologies, and diversify the economy. Skills to develop, adopt, implement or
adapt new technologies, such as improved home insulation or decentralised
renewable energy supply systems, are essential to address the opportunities and
challenges of low-carbon economies. Skills fuel technological change,
investment, diversification of the economy and contribute to the
competitiveness of enterprises and industries. Skills development, therefore,
is a leverage to boost job quantity in growing sectors and job quality through
more productive and sustainable enterprises and through improved working
conditions and worker employability.
Towards more and better green jobs
Low-carbon
economies require skills development policies addressing all three objectives.
Yet, the third objective is particularly relevant for economies striving to
prepare for the future by reducing their ecological footprint. The responsible
reaction to climate change is to shift to low-carbon, less resource and
energy-intensive, and more sustainable, ways of production and consumption.
First,
effective response strategies by enterprises to update skills and to link them
to longer-term business strategies help prepare businesses to take advantage of
upcoming opportunities, for instance through improved recycling, which
mitigates greenhouse gas emission and reduces resource scarcity.
Second,
forward-looking national development policies and strategies can include the
greening of jobs and economies. Sustaining a dynamic development process
implies anticipating where economies will be competitive and developing the
skills needed to encourage new investments and adoption of new green
technologies. The key to curbing skills shortages is a forward-looking
approach, having a vision of the opportunities and challenges ahead and
anticipating the skills needs of the economy to reap potential benefits (in
terms of quality jobs and environmental sustainability) and address the
challenges (of increased international competition or climate change) wisely.
Implications for greening economies
The first
objective is to meet new skill needs as part of mitigation and adaptation
efforts. New skill needs will arise due to policy changes or due to
environmental changes themselves, as well as to policy responses to ease
adjustment to them. The current skills sets available in labour markets might
no longer match demand regarding pollution control or emission trading.
Upskilling of workers, opportunities for lifelong learning, and updated
education and training need to be provided. The greening of current occupations
is expected largely to outnumber the need for new occupations. Core skills
portable from one work place to another become increasingly important when
economies are in transition. While much of the attention focuses on technology,
experience demonstrates that the weakest link in the production chain will
determine the performance that can be attained. Without qualified entrepreneurs
and skilled workers, the available technology and resources for investments
cannot be used or cannot deliver the expected environmental benefits and
economic returns.
Next it is
important to support a fair transition to more sustainable production. Shifting
economies towards greener ways of production entails that jobs in declining
sectors, such as coalmining, are lost. Supporting a fair transition of
displaced workers to more sustainable production requires retraining and
effective employment services. Active labour-market policies can help bridge
the employment gap and aid transition from one job to another. It is also
necessary to create dynamic and sustainable development. New technologies and
production processes for low-carbon production, reduced pollution and improved
energy and resource efficiency require anticipation of skills needs. Therefore,
governments need instruments to forecast skills needs. Also they need
institutions and feedback mechanisms to ensure that the information is
translated into training systems, so that training offers can be adjusted
accordingly.
References
Abramovitz,
J.J. et al. (2002). Adapting to climate change: natural resource management and
vulnerability reduction. Gland: IUCN – World Conservation Union.
Bird, A.
(2006). Together: making national skills strategies that work – for all: with
lessons from Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and South Africa. Bangkok: ILO
Asian Regional Office (unpublished).
BMU (2007).
Federal Ministry for the environment, nature conservation and nuclear safety. GreenTech
made in Germany: innovation atlas. Roland Berger Strategy Consultants study.
Munich: Franz Vahlen.
BVET (2007).
–Board of vocational education and training. Skills for sustainability. Sydney:
New South Wales Department for education and training
Huq, S. et
al. (2007) Reducing risks to cities from climate change; an environmental or a development
agenda? Environment and Urbanization, Vol. 19, No 1, p. 3-15.
ILO (2008a).
Conclusions on skills for improved productivity, employment growth and
development. International Labour Conference 2008. Geneva: ILO.
ILO (2008b).
Skills for improved productivity, employment growth and development. Report for
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London Energy
Partnership (2007). Skills for a low carbon London: summary report and recommendations
on the skills gaps in the energy efficiency and renewable energy sector in
London. London: Greater London Authority.
UNEP et al.
(2008). Green jobs: towards decent work in a sustainable, low-carbon world.
Nairobi: UNEP
– United Nations Environment Programme.
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