This is the final installment of Swaniti’s series on green jobs in South Asia. Previously, we have sought to define green jobs, examine the potential and risks they bring to workers and economies at large, and understand how government policies can affect the creation of decent green jobs. This installment provides a bring overview of the current situations around green jobs in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.

In India, one case study looking at new rules implemented for the collection and recycling of e-waste provides an example of how initiatives can promote environmental protection, jobs, and growth in a circular economy by regulating processes designed to curb a growing issue. At the same time, it also provides an example of the need for government rules and policies to ensure marginalize peoples and informal workers at risk of losing their livelihoods are explicitly included in these transitions.

Climate change can be seen as a market failure for a number of reasons, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a critical part not only of slowing and mitigating climate change but of correcting its market failures. The use of carbon financing – a funding tool to further climate change objectives by trading in carbon credits to make it a marketable good – and establishment of carbon markets has the potential for significant financial and environmental impact in industries ranging from agriculture to electric vehicles. To ensure these markets operate in an effective and ethical manner, however, the state must intervene and ensure the usage of standardised methodologies and regulations. The private sector, apart from its current involvement in development of renewable energy, must also expand in the space of financial adaptations. In India, the recent passage of the Energy Conservation
Amendment Bill, which includes provisions on establishing carbon markets, marks an important step forward in formalising and regulating carbon offset trading and ultimately in reducing and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions in order to meet Nationally Determined Contributions.

The first installment of this three-part series provided an examination of the defining criteria of green jobs, including the importance of ensuring that green jobs are decent jobs that provide fair wages, benefits, and worker protections. Climate-smart investments can create tens of millions of green jobs while mitigating climate change and its effects. This will […]

The Impact of climate-smart investment and the creation of decent green jobs Executive Summary The range of sustainable initiatives providing benefits to the environment, national economies, and individual livelihoods is vast, covering solar-powered cold storage for small-holder farmers’ produce, the expansion of city-wide recycling programs, large-scale wind and hydro power infrastructure projects, and numerous other […]

Introduction Diversity — in biology, ecology, and geography, to say nothing of the countless forms of human diversity — is undeniably one of India’s greatest assets. One of seventeen megadiverse countries, India is home to roughly ten percent of the world’s known plant and animal species. This biodiversity is due in large part to the […]

Executive Summary COP27 saw the world come together to make a range of strategic commitments on addressing climate change, with a particular focus on developing nations and climate finance. This provides an opportunity for India to benefit from a number of available strategies on climate change, especially in its agriculture sector, and the launch of […]

Context  Why was G-20 conceptualized? Twenty-four years after the major economies (G-7) of the world formed a group to discuss and exchange ideas, the need to bridge a dialogue between developing and developed nations was realized. In 1999, Paul Martin (then Prime Minister of Canada) and Larry Summers (US deputy treasury secretary) realized the need […]

In 2019, air pollution contributed to 12% of deaths worldwide, roughly 7 million people. In India, nearly 18% of all deaths — around 1.7 million people — were caused by air pollution, no surprise given the country has the highest levels of PM2.5 in the world. How does the air get polluted? Taken as a […]

The Government of India has sent strong signals through the direction and pace of India’s energy transition to meet India’s renewable energy generation capacity target of 175 GW by 2022.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has created global disruptions, with over 41 lakh lives being affected globally.