Some 93-95 per cent of the world’s Nature-based Solutions (NbS) employments are concentrated in the Asia-Pacific region, with the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in India being a major contributor, according to a report launched on December 7 at the 16th Conference of Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) being held at Riyadh.
More than half of the 59 million people employed globally through the employment opportunities created through NbS are women, the report titled Decent Work in Nature-based solutions 2024 noted.
The UN defines NbS, as “actions to protect, conserve, restore, sustainably use and manage natural or modified terrestrial, freshwater, coastal and marine ecosystems”.
The report is the second in a series, the first part of which was launched in 2022. The 2024 report is a joint contribution of the International Labour Organization (ILO), United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
The analysis emphasises that NbS can not only address climate change issues but also generate employment. It talks about the number and quality of jobs that can be created by NbS adoption; In turn, better quality jobs can help promote NbS. The findings would feed global policies and investments to promote NbS and achieve sustainable inclusive economies and societies.
NbS offers an essential tool in the implementation of climate and biodiversity policy frameworks when planned and implemented using a robust environmental, social, and economic framework following the IUCN Global Standard for Nature-based Solutions, said Stewart Maginnis, deputy director-general of IUCN.
This makes NbS a scalable and effective means to address the interlinked climate and biodiversity crises while delivering important benefits for human well-being and livelihoods, including good jobs.
The first report, launched in 2022 at the 15th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity in Canada’s Montreal, aimed to fill knowledge and advocacy gaps required to transition to a green economy, its effect on the global population and the role played by NbS to generate employment opportunities especially to the poor and vulnerable groups.
It talked on three key concepts of achieving decent jobs (with four pillars of employment generation, rights at work, social protection and dialogue), just transition (by seizing the opportunities and mitigating the risks of green transition for decent work) and NbS.
The 2024 report evaluates the major developments on Nbs since the report launch. NbS was included directly or indirectly in the three Rio conventions in 1992, which acknowledged NbS as a means to achieve their specific targets and adoption of its work program in the 28th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change last year in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Enhancing Nature-based Solutions for an Accelerated Climate Transformation (ENACT) was launched to improve policy relevance and clarity. Apart from this, NbS integration in various global frameworks/conventions and two resolutions of the sixth United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) in February 2023 was also done.
Also, many countries have now started integrating NbS in their national policies and action plans and more investments focusing on green and hybrid solutions since the last two decades. However, the report finds investment to be still inadequate.
The second report in the series is an attempt to deep dive and deepen the understanding the relation between NbS, employment and its role to achieve SustainableDevelopment Goal targets and thus promote informed policy integrations and financing to help the vulnerable.
Economic modelling approaches and data from UNEP’s State of Finance for Nature (SFN) 2023 report were used by the authors of the current document.
The modelled scenarios estimate that only 1.8 per cent of global employment is contributed by NbS of which 95 per cent is contributed by MGNREGS in India. However, in terms of full-time employment (FTE), it accounts 85-87 per cent of the global contribution as public employment programmes (PEPs) provide part time employment on project basis. Major contribution is from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) despite lowest share of expenditure from this region. Regions like the European Union and North America have fewer workers, but a comparatively higher percentage of FTEs.
The document also highlights that 57 per cent of expenditure occurs in high income countries while Asia- Pacific contributes to 44 per cent of the global NbS expenditure. Globally, only 0.3 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product is contributed by NbS with an estimated 14 per cent of youth (age 15-29) working in the domain.
The table below lists the region-wise current and future estimates of employments created through NbS. The source is Decent Work in Nature-based solutions.
| Region | Current employment (thousands of persons) | Additional employment by 2030 (thousands of persons) |
| North America | 233 – 706 | 190 – 318 |
| EU27 | 274 – 398 | 190 – 318 |
| Rest of Europe and Central Asia | 204 – 337 | 1,166 – 1,426 |
| Latin America and the Carribean | 571 – 612 | 1,375 – 5,799 |
| Arab States | 1 | 615 – 780 |
| Asia and the Pacific | 57,291 – 58,819 | 10,942 – 15,779 |
According to the SFN 2023 report’s projections, an evenly distributed annual increase of upto US$542 billion per year by 2030 to the potential regions could help create 20-32 million new jobs in the agriculture and forestry sectors.
Addressing climate change and various other challenges would require Nature based Infrastructure (NbI) to deliver the services from NbS. Chief of UNEP’s Climate Adaptation Branch Mirey Atallah said with trillions of dollars of infrastructure investment in the pipeline for the coming decades, NbI offers an excellent opportunity to channel a significant amount into nature and drive decent work creation and more climate resilient infrastructure.
The report estimates that even a small amount — an estimated US$2.9 trillion in NbI — can pump up significant investment for infrastructural growth. The high income countries could upgrade existing infrastructure while LMICs can leverage on the opportunity and directly implement the upgraded NbIs. Investing into community-based NbIs would foster ownerships, skill development and employment opportunities.
These NbIs would also require new set of skills and expertise such as geospatial analysis, environmental economics and artificial intelligence (AI) to be developed in the potential work force. The upskilled workforce and adaptation to NbI would also need to integrate local and indigenous knowledge and adapt climate resilience approach.
Investing in skill development shall also help decrease gender disparities by offering increasing opportunities to women and the marginalised, integrate participative decision-making approaches and ensure fair working conditions.
However, the authors mention scaling NbI and NbS may pose challenges owing to lack of policies, data, implementation timelines, skill gaps, awareness and funding, especially in low-income countries.
At present, most of the work through NbS is temporary and informal. The workers are also not properly skilled and resilient to climate change shocks. Increasing investments in NbS would mean more jobs but the regions would still suffer as effective delivery would mean sector-specific upskilling for their work force.
The analysis highlighted that online surveys were conducted where approximately 66 per cent of respondents face skill-related challenges in project implementation. Challenges such as lack of policies on developing/upgrading skills for NbS implementation barring a few countries like Canada, Scotland, Spain and New Zealand, limited funding and collaborations between academia and practitioners would add on to the woes.
The report recommends strengthening of policy frameworks, investments in upskilling the workforce for middle and higher skilled roles, work on promoting rights and inclusivity in the NbS workforce and strengthening data collection and monitoring for informed decisions.
Moustapha Kamal Gueye, ILO Director for the Priority Action Programme on Just transitions, said: “We hope this report will contribute to the global dialogue on the importance of decent work in protecting, restoring and sustainably managing our ecosystems. We also hope it will provide guidance to policymakers and practitioners on leveraging employment opportunities when planning and implementing NbS.”