What counts as a ‘Green Job’?

Speakers’ takeaway:

Marek Harsdorff

Green Jobs Specialist, International Labour Organization (ILO)

“When counting employment, you may not only want to count in the sector itself, but you may wish to count also the indirect jobs that are in the supply chain.”

• Direct jobs: Employment within the green industries such as workers installing solar panels.
• Indirect jobs: Employment across upstream and downstream supply chains such as aluminium for solar frames and lithium for batteries.
• Induced jobs: Employment enabled by wider economic activity generated by direct and indirect jobs such as agrarian livelihoods made possible through access to renewable power

Rebekah Shirley

Executive Director, World Resources Institute (WRI), Africa

“The bigger question is actually not even in the green direct jobs, but in the indirect jobs up the supply chain and downstream… induced jobs.”

• Indirect and induced employment can be substantial but is harder to estimate.
• Broader employment estimates can miss work outside formal employment

Sonia Dias

Global Waste Sector Specialist, Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO)

“Cooperatives and other types of collectives are in a unique position to greening work, while also protecting livelihoods… We need a green job and a green economy definition that builds from the everyday circularities of the Global South.”

Start with the realities of work

• Much of the work that preserves and restores the environment sits outside conventional formal employment in the Global South
• Formal job creation is not the primary development pathway for most countries, especially in the Global South.

Worker led models offer lessons

• Pune, India and Belo Horizonte, Brazil integrated waste-picker cooperatives into municipal source-segregation systems, securing and improving livelihoods for existing informal workers.

Why cooperatives matter

• Extend pathways to social protection
• Open channels for social dialogue
• Protect existing livelihoods

📅 Date: 13 October 2026
🕐 Time: 10:00–11:00 am EDT | 11:00 am–12:00 pm ART | 2:00–3:00 pm GMT | 4:00–5:00 pm SAST | 5:00–6:00 pm EEST | 7:30–8:30 pm IST/SLST
💻 Medium: Zoom