Employment and transition from climate change: Not an easy task

Over the last decades, the resulting impact of climate change has become more and more apparent. Phenomena like unusually high temperatures, melting glaciers, rising sea level, amongst others, are becoming more frequent on a global basis; and human intervention has been playing a catalytic – and unfortunately destructive – role. Excessive use of fossil fuels, as well as deforestation for the sake of the expansion of urban areas, are only a couple of reasons why the environment has been facing these dramatic meteorological changes. Nonetheless, climate change has, also apparent impact upon employment.

Anna Goudi, Key Account Manager of the Greek branch of the Transnational Employment Centre, notes the exigencies of path dependent transition towards a green economy. On the one hand, “It is crucial to understand that we live in a place, the Mediterranean Sea, which is one of the most climate-sensitive areas of the world. Here physical riskssuch as floods and fires, but also chronic events such as rising sea levels are more prominent. These physical risks have a twofold impact on our economy; they make coastal areas uninhabitable and disastrous for tourism, transport, agricultural production, mountainous areas΄ fauna and flora destroyed by fires and, in parallel, they increase public spending on Disaster risk management and climate change adaptation policies. Bu that they reduce the available funds for other policies, including employment. In addition to the physical risks, the transition risksassociated with the transition to a green economy (i.e. green taxation) create an uncertain path of change. Handling all of these risks successfully relates to the resiliency of the local economy and how adapts to those. But local economy is not something vague; it is all of us”.

The transition in question, is indeed a debatable and relatively undefined field. Claudia Caggiano, Key Account Manager of the Italian branch of the Transnational Employment Centre emphasizes the importance of adjusting to climate change and the measures taken towards ecological transition, dividing the latter in four macro areas. First the sustainable agriculture and circular economy followed by renewable energy, hydrogen, and sustainable mobility. The latter should be coupled by energy efficiency and building renovation and the final area should be the protection of land and water resources. As she stresses, the official policy approach in Italy supports “a desirable scenario where companies gradually change their production model, research and development is redirected towards clean technologies, investors are enabled to assess the risks and changes associated with the transition and then change their financial portfolio composition in favour of environmentally sustainable investments.”

In that respect, Mari, Key Account Manager of the Spanish branch of the Transnational Employment Centre, points out the importance of circular economy. “A circular economy model’s goal is to use renewable resources efficiently enhancing natural capital and creating the necessary conditions for the regeneration of natural systems to avoid the stock of finite materials.”. She states that the YOUTHShare project “explores NEET’s opportunities in those sectors, enhancing NEET employability by advancing knowledge and skills in resilient sectors and social economy.”

Overall, the tone is given by Anna Michael, Key Account Manager at the Cypriot branch of the Transnational Employment Centre. She refers to the world as a “moving organism” and supports that there’s a tendency to change a current capital-driven system to a more societal one, stating that this shift of needs of the modern world is partly due to climate change. “During our journey at YOUTHShare we had the opportunity to introduce young people to such systems and help them understand that there are other forms of entrepreneurial activities and employment. They have learnt different alternatives to minimise consumption such as hiring, and leasing, upcycling, collaborative consumption etc.”

In conclusion, climate change is a phenomenon that, although is partly unavoidable, on the other hand it could be handled more positively, with the contribution of appropriately trained people. YOUTHShare training program offers to its participants the possibility to explore new ways of handling the effects of these environmental changes, which will be beneficial towards humans as well as the environment.

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