These jobs are of course driven by economic activity linked to the production of essentials such as food, raw materials and living space. However, the need to create jobs and incomes for citizens has also been used politically to justify the destruction of nature. If we wanted progress and to create jobs, we had no choice but to sacrifice nature.
It is now apparent that, after centuries of exponential population and economic growth, we are hitting the limits of this paradigm. Firstly, many economic activities and jobs are directly dependent on nature and the ecosystem services it provides. In 2018, the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated this was the case for 1.2 billion jobs globally, around 40% of total employment. As the state of nature deteriorates, so do these jobs.
More recently, the Dasgupta Review has highlighted this challenge even more dramatically, warning that if we continue to take nature for granted and do not assign it value in our economic model, we are likely to continue its destruction and along with it, the foundation on which so many jobs and economic activities depend.
So, as we embark on the UN Decade for Ecosystem Restoration - at the same time as workers and enterprises are trying to recover from COVID-19 - we desperately need a paradigm that allows us to either find synergies with nature, or more sustainably manage the trade-offs between nature and decent jobs.
Nature-based Solutions (NbS) provide such a paradigm, at least for certain economic sectors and physical spaces, as was highlighted in the recent joint ILO/WWF report. NbS can provide solutions to societal problems without sacrificing nature and biodiversity in the process.
Two important points on managing these synergies and trade-offs between jobs and nature are worth highlighting.
Firstly, in sectors that are more dependent on nature – namely agriculture, fisheries, forestry, water and tourism - NbS can improve productivity and the sustainability of jobs. They can help provide soils that are more fertile, richer fishing grounds, forests that are more resilient, cleaner water, and more attractive tourism experiences. Thus, they create synergies where a natural environment that thrives also enables enterprises and jobs that thrive.
Secondly, even where synergies are harder to achieve and trade-offs and compromises are unavoidable, NbS can still help. For example, while agroforestry requires land, which cannot also be a natural habitat, NbS offer an approach that does not compromise food production yet is able to sustain a much wider range of species, thus preserving biodiversity. Similarly, incorporating NbS to provide green infrastructure does not eliminate the need for land, but it does make it possible to minimize the negative impact on natural capital while making the infrastructure more resilient.
What is of particular interest from a job creation perspective is that in many cases the use of NbS can be more employment-intensive and thus result in more jobs being created, compared to the current “grey” approaches. NbS are more interdisciplinary, less standardized and require more local adaptation. As a result, they are more knowledge-intensive and require the inputs of more actors such as ecologists, green enterprises and local communities to be implemented effectively. NbS also have an inherent requirement to collaborate with nature, which means that they are less amenable to mechanization and standardization. Taken together these characteristics lead to a more employment-intensive approach.
Does this greater labour intensity make NbS less affordable and economically attractive? There are reasons to believe this is not necessarily the case. NbS harness nature’s ability to provide its services for free: coastal protection using mangroves instead of a concrete dyke will require much lower material input costs. They also deliver a number of co-benefits, such as climate change mitigation through absorption of carbon and preservation of biodiversity. If these benefits are accounted for in the economic analysis, they will also help to offset additional labour costs. Finally, of course, there is the value of creating more jobs, which contributes to a more inclusive economy and a reduction in the costs of un- and underemployment- to both individuals and society as a whole. Such costs are still too often ignored in our economic analysis.
NbS thus provide an approach to recovery policies and programmes where job creation and nature are both prioritized. It is time we adopted them on a much wider scale. The ILO, with its global mandate for improving the world of work, will continue to collaborate with partners to make this a reality.
About the author
Maikel LIEUW-KIE-SONG is a civil and environmental engineer working in the Employment Intensive Investment Programme (EIIP) of the International Labour Organization (ILO). The ILO was founded in 1919 to pursue a vision based on the premise that universal, lasting peace can be established only if it is based on social justice. It is a specialized agency of the UN and remains the only tripartite UN agency, bringing together governments, employers and workers of 187 member States. The main aims of the ILO are to promote rights at work, encourage decent employment opportunities, enhance social protection and strengthen dialogue on work-related issues. The ILO’s Employment Intensive Investment Programme supports member States in the design, formulation, implementation and evaluation of policies and programmes aiming to address unemployment and underemployment through public investment.
