Green Growth by Gareth Dale Manu V. Mathai Jose A. Puppim de Oliveira

Author:Gareth Dale,Manu V. Mathai,Jose A. Puppim de Oliveira
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zed Books
Published: 2016-09-22T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

Green jobs to promote sustainable development: creating a value chain of solid waste recycling in Brazil

Anne Posthuma and Paulo Sergio Muçouçah*

Introduction

The concept of ‘green growth’ involves a strong belief that scientific research, technological innovation and engineering solutions are capable of controlling the pace of environmental degradation, raising efficiency of natural resource usage and ensuring well-being while also raising productivity and economic growth.1 Yet, a key criticism of the green growth concept is that it is an insufficient policy guideline for achieving a sustainable future given the harsh realities of finite and unequally distributed resources, poverty and socio-economic exclusion that characterize so much of our current development paradigm.2 Green growth proponents include leaders of corporations, investors and policy-makers, but often the social dimensions of a more sustainable society receive inadequate attention, including how to ensure employment and income opportunities and paths for socio-economic inclusion, particularly for the poorest sections of society. In this way, the green growth concept risks leaving in place the existing structures of inequality and socio-economic exclusion that underpin and perpetuate the current unsustainable paradigm of production, consumption and distribution.3 In contrast, the ‘sustainable development’ framework seeks a more integrated approach, being founded upon three interlocking economic, environmental and social dimensions.4

Hence, when considering the economic and environmental components of sustainable development, it is equally important to take into account the role of social well-being that is attained through the promotion of stable and decent opportunities for employment and income generation. Within this perspective, the concept of green jobs5 emerged, which reinforces the promotion of quality job creation in environmentally sustainable sectors and activities, and contributes to the greening of existing enterprises and economies through the use of renewable energies, new technologies and materials, skills development and ensuring markets for sustainable products and services.6 It is important to highlight this recognition that the creation of decent work and incomes is not an automatic outcome of market mechanisms in the shift to a green economy.7 For this reason, a key task involves identification of good practices and their respective drivers, or policy instruments and institutions, which play a crucial role in ensuring the creation, remuneration, safety and other relative quality aspects of green jobs.8

The growth of recycling industries exemplifies how shifting economic perspectives and societal values can lead to the creation and growth of jobs linked to environmentally sustainable practices. The growth of recycling itself is based upon a recognition that waste has an economic value (i.e. it is less expensive to recycle, reprocess and reuse materials), an environmental value (i.e. the growth of waste recycling can result in less mining and deforestation, processing and consumption of raw resources), as well as a social value (i.e. waste recycling can generate green jobs and income-generating activities). Governments, particularly at the local level, have realized that recycling provides important public benefits, in addition to substantial cost savings.

In this context, the present chapter uses a value chain framework to examine the Brazilian experience in promoting solid waste recycling through a ‘bottom-up’ approach

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