PSI blog on the Financial Crisis

Green policies and jobs: a double dividend?

Nearly 40 per cent of all jobs worldwide are in high carbon intensive sectors. If we want to arrest climate change, this will inevitably create an employment challenge as workers will have to move to different jobs and sectors. And it raises the question to what extent “green” policies can produce a double dividend, in terms of environmental and employment goals.

As part of packages to overcome the ongoing global economic and jobs crisis, countries have launched infrastructure investments designed to promote transitions to a greener economy. Such efforts would at the same time serve social objectives to the extent that spending on green projects promotes recovery and job creation. They would also help reduce the length of the labour market recession.

Click here on the ILO website for a series of questions and answers on climate change, green policies and jobs.

From crisis to recovery

Politicians and business leaders are all now able to speak as fluently a NGOs and scientists about the urgency of climate change and the opportunities of a low carbon economy. Yet there is a growing chasm between this vision of the future and a willingness to take the bold decisions necessary to make the change happen, particularly in the field of economic policy.

This pamphlet looks at how, at this moment of financial crisis we must seriously engage the big economic levers of tax, public spending, capital markets and industrial strategy, to make the transformation into a low carbon economy a reality.
http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/grea_p.aspx?id=4156

Green Alliance recently published From Crisis to Recovery, a collection of pieces from figures in investment, business, trade unions and NGOs on new economic policies for a low-carbon future. The report can be downloaded from www.green-alliance.org.uk

Special Report: SRI - Powering towards a low-carbon future

With the Copenhagen Climate Summit just around the corner, but the world's governments still very focused on economic recovery, many more policymakers are seeing the need to address economic and climate change challenges at the same time.

Click here for full text.

ITUC/Reuters: Unions favour deep CO2 cuts and green jobs

Copenhagen cannot simply be about the environment with the exclusion of social and employment questions

Trade unions are supporting deep cuts in greenhouse gases as part of a planned U.N. climate pact and want to ensure jobs are preserved in a shift to a green economy, a leader of a global labour group said on Tuesday.

More jobs could be created than are lost if governments are serious about promoting a switch from fossil fuels to a low-carbon economy, said Guy Ryder, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).

"We are aboard. It’s a fragile consensus but it is there," Ryder told Reuters of an ITUC endorsement in 2008 of cuts in greenhouse emissions as part of a planned treaty to help avert rising sea levels, more heatwaves, droughts and floods.

More here: http://www.ituc-csi.org/spip.php?article4192

UN and Republic of Korea partner to boost 'green' growth

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has joined forces with the Republic of Korea (ROK) to support the East Asian nation’s quest for a sustainable ‘green’ economic future in the midst of a global recession.

UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner noted that Asia – particularly the ROK, China and Japan – as well as Australia have seen the greatest share of economic stimulus packages channelled into environmental investment.

More here: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=31814&Cr=unep&Cr1=green

Vive la taxe carbone !

Avec la « contribution climat-énergie », la France pourrait combler son retard en matière de taxation de l'énergie. Et être gagnante.

Une « contribution climat-énergie » (CCE) – ou taxe carbone – pourrait voir le jour en France dès janvier 2010. C'est en tout cas la principale proposition de la commission Rocard, dont le rapport doit être remis au gouvernement le mardi 28 juillet.

Si le principe de cette taxe a fait consensus lors de la conférence des experts des 2 et 3 juillet dernier, des divergences subsistent sur les modalités. Pour Bercy, elle permettrait de financer, entre autres, la suppression de la taxe professionnelle (6,3 milliards d'euros), tandis que le ministère de l'Environnement plaide pour sa redistribution « intégrale » au nom de la sauvegarde du pouvoir d'achat des Français.

Côté entreprises, cette taxe coûterait 0,1 % de la valeur ajoutée du secteur tertiaire et 1 % pour l'industrie, même si certains secteurs, comme le transport, seraient plus fortement touchés. Côté ménages, le surcoût en chauffage serait au plus de 170 euros (cas d'une maison individuelle alimentée au fioul), et de 58 euros par véhicule. Au plus, car cette taxe devrait favoriser des économies d'énergie qui résulteront elles-mêmes d'investissements « verts » et de créations d'emplois. Au final, juge l'Ademe, la CCE pourrait rapporter plus que son coût pour le contribuable. A condition de soutenir emplois verts, économies d'énergie... et pouvoir d'achat des seuls Français qui en ont vraiment besoin.

En instituant la CCE, les taxes sur l'énergie représenteraient 1,8 % du produit intérieur brut (PIB) et 3,5 % des recettes fiscales de l'Hexagone, indique encore l'Ademe. La France se retrouverait alors au niveau des leaders européens en matière de fiscalité verte, alors qu'elle se situait en 2006 bien en dessous de la moyenne de l'UE à quinze.

Plus ici : http://www.alternatives-economiques.fr/taxe-carbonne---vive-la-taxe-carbone-_fr_art_633_43699.html

‘Green’ economy vital to promoting development in midst of crises

Nearly two dozen agencies of the United Nations system have banded together to issue an urgent call for nations to ‘green’ their economies to address the multiple crises that are dampening progress towards reaching development targets.

In a statement to the high-level UN Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development, currently underway in New York, 21 agencies joined forces to underscore the need for a shift to a green economy that can spur job creation and curb a multitude of threats ranging from current crises related to food, water and climate change.

“The solidarity of the international community is being tested,” said the statement. “Let this economic recovery be the turning point for an ambitious and effective international response to the multiple crises facing humanity.”

The ultimate test, the agencies pointed out, will come in December when nations are expected to wrap up negotiations in the Danish capital on a new climate change pact that will replace the Kyoto Protocol, whose first commitment period expires in 2012.

“Let Copenhagen be the turning point for ushering in a global green economy,” they said.
More here: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=31272&Cr=green+economy&Cr1=

Major world economies aim for "green growth" as the way out of the crisis

The world’s main economies are looking to “green growth” as the way forward out of the current crisis, opening up new prospects for climate-change negotiations ahead of the 15th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP15) in Copenhagen in December.

Ministers from 40 countries, representing 80% of the world economy, discussed the crisis and where next at the OECD's annual ministerial meeting in Paris. Participants included the 30 OECD member countries plus five countries that are candidates for membership, Chile, Estonia, Israel, Russia and Slovenia, and five major economies with which the OECD has a policy of ‘enhanced engagement’  -- Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa.

In a Declaration on Green Growth signed by all 30 OECD countries plus Chile, Estonia, Israel and Slovenia, ministers tasked the OECD with developing a Green Growth Strategy bringing together economic, environmental, technological, financial  and development aspects into a comprehensive framework. A first report will be delivered to the OECD’s next  Ministerial Council Meeting in 2010.

Full text here: http://www.oecd.org/document/63/0,3343,en_2649_201185_43164671_1_1_1_1,00.html

Investments in Clean Energy Are Hampered by Financial Crisis

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has issued a report entitled The global financial crisis and its impact on renewable energy finance. The paper reports that in 2008, investment in the renewable energy sector increased to $155 billion, from $148 billion in 2007. However, investment in the second half of 2008 was down 17% from the first half, and down 23% from the final six months of 2007.

The report analyzed the financial flows into renewable energy investment from a number of sources. It found that in every case, investment slowed dramatically by the first quarter of 2009. Most companies in the renewable energy sector, from small-scale project developers to independent power purchasers, will feel the effects of decreased investment.

More here: http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/2711.html
For full report click here: http://sefi.unep.org/fileadmin/media/sefi/docs/publications/Study_Financial_Crisis_impact_on_RE_.pdf

Future Fuel

Manfred Warda, General Secretary of the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions, stresses that the economic crisis has not made the energy crisis and its long-term consequences disappear and insists on the importance of finding a sustainable energy solution. Read more here: http://www.global-unions.org/IMG/pdf/Getting_the_World_to_Work-4.pdf