PURSUING CLIMATE CHANGE AND A GREEN ECONOMY

Nov 23, 2018 Editorial

The raging wildfires in California and floods everywhere signal that climate change is real and for the most part, is the result of work-related human activity. Experts have linked climate change to higher temperatures, lower humidity, changes in wind and rainfall patterns and drier, warmer conditions.
There is evidence that climate change has damaged infrastructure, disrupted businesses, and destroyed livelihoods. The unprecedented destruction has affected business and workers, especially the working poor, the self-employed, and those in informal, seasonal and casual work, who often lack adequate social protection and who have limited alternative income opportunities.
Green economies are considered the future engines of growth, both in the developed and the developing countries. Green economies can generate decent jobs that contribute significantly to climate mitigation and adaptation and poverty eradication.
But in pursuing a green economy, the world does not have to choose between job creation and preserving environmental sustainability, which is a must from a labour market perspective. In a green economy, the different types of jobs that exist today, especially those in highly polluting or energy-intensive industries will disappear, and will be replaced with new, renewable energy jobs.
In truth, this trend is already underway in several countries. In 2016, the International Renewable Energy Agency stated that employment in renewable energy industries reached 8.1 million, which was a five percent increase over the previous year.
In Guyana, the forestry, energy, recycling, transport and agriculture sectors are likely to gain from the transition to a green economy. It is expected that a shift to more sustainable practices in agriculture, which has a high proportion of the country’s workforce and where decent jobs are scarce, has the potential to create thousands more full-time jobs by 2050.
However, the challenge is not just about creating more jobs, but it is the quality of those jobs that counts. Sustainable development must be pursued not only for its environmental consequences, but also for its social and economic dimensions.
The successful transition to a green economy would require appropriate regulation by the government, skills development and social protection.
Climate change does not respect borders or institutions, therefore, it is imperative for governments and the different organizations to work together coherently to achieve common objectives in the fight against it. This is necessary not only to transition to a green economy but, most importantly, is required to achieve all 17 inter-related goals of the United Nations (UN) 2030 agenda on sustainable development.
The scale of climate change Guyana faces today and in the future is very clear. Most of Guyana is below sea level, therefore it is important to take into consideration floods and rising sea levels, and the potential threats they pose on the coastal areas of the country where the vast majority of the population resides.
These adverse effects of climate change continue to impact the country and pose even a greater threat to our survival. They could undermine the more than five decades of development since independence and the prospects for the country to achieve the UN goals of sustainable development by 2030.
With impending oil production slated for 2020, it is important for us to have mechanisms in place to mitigate the effects of climate change and protect the environment in order to achieve a green economy.
Ignoring climate change could eventually damage potential economic growth. That was the stark warning issued by the United Kingdom Stern Review over a decade ago.
Since then, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found incontrovertible evidence that human-induced climate change is well underway, and warned of the consequences of failing to limit global temperature rise to, at most, 2°Celsius over pre-industrial levels.
This bleak outlook was confirmed by many other studies, including the International Labour Organization’s Global Economic Linkages, which predicts a drop in global productivity levels by 2.4 percent by 2030 and 7.2 percent by 2050, due to climate change.
Pursuing a green economy would help to find solutions to climate change.