Green jobs in Argentina: opportunities to move forward with the environmental and social agenda

Abstract

The Argentine economy has been becoming greener because of a new political orientation, international commitments (the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development) and private sector initiatives. This transition is having economic and social impacts. The aim of the present article is to determine the potential of the economy to create green jobs that protect workers and the environment. In 2015, 7% of formal jobs were green and presented better average employment conditions than the rest. They were predominantly in goods production and the provision of urban services, such as sanitation and transport. Regulations and public policies seem to be the main factors driving green job creation, with consumption still playing a minor role. For the transition to a green economy to be fair, policies must take account of the employment dimension in order to initiate a virtuous circle leading to a more productive, inclusive and environmentally friendly economy.

Going Green: Estimating the Potential of Green Jobs in Argentina

“…At the same time, they underline that many workers will have to update their skills to meet the demand of emerging sectors, and many firms will have to adopt new technologies and adapt to new ways of doing business. As part of the ILO's Green Jobs initiative, Ernst et al (2019) estimate the potential of green jobs in Argentina by sector and company and find that between 4% and 7% of jobs were green in 2015. In particular, most green jobs were in manufacturing, transport, the agriculture, livestock, forestry and fisheries sector, and water supply and waste management.…”

“…We follow a similar approach defining high green potential occupations as those with greenness scores greater than a factor times the mean green potential. That factor is set to maximize the correlation between the sectoral shares to the ones obtained by Ernst et al (2019), who follow the methodology proposed by the ILO's Green Jobs initiative to estimate green jobs in Argentina. According to the definition of ILO, green jobs are those that, by meeting decent work standards, contribute to the preservation and restoration of the environment.…”

“…According to the definition of ILO, green jobs are those that, by meeting decent work standards, contribute to the preservation and restoration of the environment. To compare our estimates with those of Ernst et al (2019), we additionally define formal green jobs as those workers with high green potential who are in formal positions 16 . As Ernst et al (2019), we consider formal workers as wage employment contributing to the social security system.…”

The circular economy and the Green Jobs creation

“…The EGSS is the sector where Green Jobs are created next to the EP activities (Ernst et al 2019 ), which are categorized according to the Classification of Environmental Protection Activities (CEPA). Also related to the EGSS is the list Classification of Resource Management Activities (CReMA) associated with Green Jobs (Eurostat 2020b ).…”

What Characteristics Do the Firms Have That Go Beyond Compliance with Regulation in Environmental Protection? A Multiple Discriminant Analysis

“…Argentina is a developing country with strong environmental regulation but a patchy environment which results in an important number of offenders [61,62]. There is also an environmentally aware population [63] and flourishing eco-entrepreneurship with pro-active practices [64,65]. Early research [56,66] identified several of the pro-environmental discourses analyzed in the paper.…”