Green Economy Glossary and Key Facts
Glossary
Environment: natural surroundings, including air, water, land, plants, animals, and other living organisms, as well as the physical and social conditions that affect them. It encompasses both natural elements and human-made factors, such as buildings, roads, pollution, and other aspects of human activity.
Sustainability: It involves finding a balance between economic, environmental, and social factors to ensure that development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Sustainability aims to promote longevity, resilience, and the well-being of both human societies and the natural environment. Sustainable development builds on an understanding that the economy, the society and the environment are connected, and it aims to bring benefit to all three.
Ecology: It emphasizes the relationship between living things and their environment, especially how human activity affects animal, plant life and entire ecosystems
Green economy: An economic system that prioritizes sustainability and environmental conservation while fostering economic growth and social well-being. It involves transitioning towards production, consumption, and investment patterns that are environmentally friendly and resource-efficient. Additionally, the green economy seeks to create jobs and opportunities in sectors such as renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, clean transportation, and eco-friendly technologies. The goal of a green economy is to achieve sustainable development into all aspects of economic decision-making and policy formulation.
Green jobs: Decent employment opportunities that aid in the preservation or restoration of the environment, whether within conventional fields like manufacturing and construction or within environmentally-friendly sectors such as renewable energy and energy efficiency. It concerns both the product and the processes.
Green Transition: It refers to a comprehensive shift in societal, economic, and environmental systems towards sustainability and resilience. It encompasses a wide range of changes, including adopting renewable energy sources, promoting energy efficiency, implementing sustainable agricultural practices, transitioning to circular economies with reduced waste and resource consumption, and prioritizing biodiversity conservation.
Green skills: Skills that allow us to identify and mitigate environmental risks, to recognize the social and ethical dimensions of environmental issues and their impact on communities and society.
Green competences: A group of skills for sustainability that can be added to education programs to help students learn how to think, plan, and act with empathy, responsibility, and concern for the health of our planet and people.
Just transition: The concept recognizes that the Green transition can have significant social and economic impacts. Thus, it seeks to ensure that while moving towards sustainability, the burdens and benefits are distributed fairly among all stakeholders. This includes workers in industries undergoing transformation, communities reliant on those industries, and marginalized groups who may be disproportionately affected.
Key concepts and definitions
Green Transition is a comprehensive shift in societal, economic, and environmental systems towards sustainability and resilience. It encompasses a wide range of changes, including adopting renewable energy sources, promoting energy efficiency, implementing sustainable agricultural practices, transitioning to circular economies with reduced waste and resource consumption, and prioritizing biodiversity conservation. A preoccupation is that the Green Transition might harm some stakeholders more than others, like those working in industries heavily reliant on fossil fuels or vulnerable societal groups such as people with disabilities. Therefore, to ensure its success the Green Transition should be also a Just Transition which should assure that the burdens and benefits are distributed fairly among the population without leaving no one behind. Listed below there are some key actions that should be put in place:
Education and Training
Mainstream education and tailored training should be available should integrate green topics, knowledge and traits in their curricula, offering to obtain the green skills likely to be in demand for future jobs.
Inclusion in the labour market
People with disabilities are at a higher risk of marginalisation in the labour market. Social service providers can make a real difference, also in the green economy, with high-quality support to recruiting, preparing and accompanying employees with disabilities inside a company or organisation.
Social inclusion
Employment for people with disabilities in the green economy will help resolve major obstacles that currently prevent many from having the same rights, getting adequate support for their needs, and taking up decent work. An inclusive green economy, that offers jobs, salaries and financial independence, can help change attitudes towards people with disabilities.
Staff training and funding
Career counselling and job coaching towards a green economy require training and support, too; the employment support sector ought to be integrated with policy initiatives and programmes aimed at preparing workers for the green transition.
Social protection
Expected job losses may disproportionately affect persons with disabilities, who often experience discrimination and precarious employment. Even if employed, many people with disabilities have to get by with sporadic or part-time employment and low pay and require financial support to cope with high costs of living.