Mumbai: More than three lakh workers will be employed in the solar and wind energy sectors to meet the country’s target of generating 175 gigawatts of electricity from renewable sources by 2022, an International Labour Organisation (ILO) report said.
The report titled, World Employment and Social Outlook (WESO) 2018: Greening with Jobs, quoted from a study conducted by the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) and the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC), on the changes in sectoral employment that will occur in order to meet India’s target. The study was based on surveys of solar and wind companies, developers and manufacturers.
“India is rapidly increasing its share of renewable energy sources, but still relies on coal, oil, natural gas, and the related carbon emissions for 80% of its electricity,” the report released on Tuesday said.
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This formed a small part of the report, which focused on the trajectory of the labour market in the backdrop of environmentally sustainable production practices. Tackling the misconception that green economies pave the way for economically undesirable outcomes, the report said rather than a trade-off between the two, their development goes hand in hand.
According to the ILO report, there will be a net increase of 18 million jobs across the globe as a result of environmentally sustainable measures taken in the production and use of energy.
This net figure is based on the estimation that the resultant job losses of six million will eventually lead to an increase of 24 million jobs as greener practices are adopted. Of this, 14 million jobs created will be in Asia and the Pacific.
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“The transition to a green economy will inevitably cause job losses in certain sectors as carbon and resource-intensive industries are scaled down, but they will be offset by new job opportunities,” the report said.
However, the report emphasised that the net increase of 18 million jobs is dependent on a supportive policy framework to aid displaced workers and skill development programmes to help ease them into jobs that require new skills.
It mentioned that although India does have a specific body or council to address the skills development for green transition, it has no existing institutional mechanism to anticipate skills needs and adapt training provision. Of the 27 countries surveyed, India and seven others fall under this category. “Developing and emerging economies have relatively weaker institutional capacity for integrating skills and environmental sustainability,” the report said.
Cause for concern
The report stressed on the urgency of economies adopting sustainable practices, adding, in 2013, humanity used 1.7 times the amount of resources and waste that the biosphere was able to regenerate and absorb.
The report reads, “It is striking that in a context of scarce resources and limited ability to absorb waste, current patterns of economic growth rely largely on the extraction of resources, manufacturing, consumption and waste.”
It explained this urgency from the perspective of the job market by connecting labour productivity to climate change.
“Looking ahead, projected temperature increases will make heat stress more common, reducing the total number of working hours by 2% globally by 2030 and affecting workers in agriculture, and developing countries,” the report said.
It also said the damage associated with unmitigated climate change will undermine GDP growth, productivity, and working conditions.