A rapidly urbanizing world presents enormous economic opportunities for the poor and vulnerable but also significant barriers to economic inclusion. This report provides an overview of the urban context and challenges, describes a framework for fostering urban economic inclusion, and examines the current landscape of economic inclusion programs, starting with the policy impetus driving their emergence.
This research examines the European Union's (EU) push for a circular economy under the Juncker Commission. While the EU promotes a circular economy for environmental and economic benefits, the study finds a gap between its ambitious goals and actual policies. EU discourse emphasizes broad sustainability but policies focus on waste management, suggesting a need for a more comprehensive approach to achieve a truly circular future.
This report explores the latest AI applications and trends in emerging markets and includes several examples of how AI is expanding opportunities and contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The report offers initial findings and recommendations to development organizations, policymakers, and other private and public stakeholders seeking to address barriers to employment and to promote opportunities for refugee women in the digital workforce in Jordan and Lebanon.
This strategic brief shows aquatic food systems have the potential to provide livelihood opportunities for youth but challenges remain for them to join the sector. Multisector initiatives to improve access to training and finance as well as promote digital innovation can improve the participation of youth in fisheries, aquaculture and associated value chains.
Buildher aims to equip women in Kenya with accredited construction skills, which are expected to allow beneficiaries to have greater financial independence and prosperity, to change male attitudes and to promote gender equality within the construction industry.
This paper is the first sector-specific quantitative study on the employment effects of the EU transition on a global scale, including ethical dimensions of those effects, as far as we are aware. Overall, this paper contributes to the broader discussion of CE-induced social effects of sustainability transitions. Its results indicate that employment could significantly decrease in low- to upper-middle-income countries outside the EU, in particular in labour-intense apparel production. Employment could increase in less-labour intense downstream reuse and recycling activities in the EU and second-hand retail in- and outside the EU.
What are circular jobs exactly? And how can we ensure the transition to the circular economy is positive for work and workers? This Note gives us circular jobs definition framework defines circular jobs, with examples of jobs that contribute to the circular economy, and explains how this is used in Circle Economy's Circular Jobs Monitor, an online tool that gathers and displays the number and range of jobs that are part of the circular economy.
Building on the success of the Resilience Academy and Open Cities programs, the objective of this pilot study is to explore the feasibility of establishing a Digital Works for Urban Resilience Program, targeting local populations who have been impacted by COVID-19 restrictions.
This paper assesses the link between human capital, emission and technological change, using OECD data on employed individuals’ cognitive skills as well as industrial emissions. The findings demonstrate that higher levels of cognitive skills are associated with employment in industries that rely less on emissions. In addition, those industries have been able over time to reduce their reliance on emissions for production. The study provides evidence that across OECD countries less emission-intensive industries require more highly skilled workers – thus investments in education are critical to better enable the uptake of green technologies.
These guidelines encompass steps and methods for Organisational Development (OD) support for Youth Organizations (YO) in the agribusiness sector with the goal to strengthen their self-sustaining structures, systems and service delivery. A Youth Organization (YO) in this context is defined as an organised, member-driven grouping of young people pursuing particular purposes (e.g. promotion of agribusiness for income generation and employment, public or political representation of youth agripreneurs in a region).
The main objective of this guidebook is to provide policymakers, workers’ and employers’ organizations and other stakeholders with a practical tool to help them in developing viable policy options to address the many challenges of extending social protection to workers in the informal economy and facilitating transitions to formality.
This report identifies the circular economy baseline, market gaps and opportunities existing in Africa. The research findings highlight five opportunity areas to transition Africa to a circular economy development model based on a set of criteria including circularity potential, economic significance, transformative impact potential and momentum. The thematic areas identified as a result are food systems, packaging, built environment, fashion and textile, and electronics.
The world’s global plastics waste crisis demands policy coordination and technological solutions to improve waste management systems, and organizations worldwide have created momentum around the concept of a circular economy. This paper advances a holistic, inclusive circular economy framework that aims to empower waste pickers with the following basic pillars: (1) build collaborative networks of stakeholders to enable inclusion of waste pickers; (2) establish cooperative enterprise models to integrate waste pickers into the formal economy; (3) build waste pickers’ technical skills and capacity for entrepreneurship; and (4) provide access to technologies and markets that enable waste pickers to manufacture upcycled products.
The Global Youth Energy Outlook (GYEO) is the first youth-led research project of its kind organized by Student Energy to engage over 40,000 young people ages 18 to 30 and share their perspectives on the energy transition. The research highlights that most young people want their countries to take immediate and drastic climate action. At the same time, public and private sector leaders are called upon to actively create opportunities for young people and meaningfully engage youth in decision-making spaces. Additionally, the report highlights regional differences between young people from developing and emerging economies and those from high-income countries.
The authors of this article combined data collected from various sources to build a data-driven assessment of the number of such online workers (also known as online freelancers) globally. Their headline estimate is that there are 163 million freelancer profiles registered on online labour platforms globally.
This report aims to inspire and inform a conversation about how we might reimagine and intentionally design a truly just and sustainable fashion system. The circular fashion industry offers environmental benefits, but also has the potential to negatively impact jobs. While some jobs might disappear due to automation, new opportunities will emerge in areas like repair and resale. These new jobs will require different skillsets compared to traditional garment industry jobs.
This is an article about leveling up the economy through circular economy jobs. It discusses the benefits of a circular economy, which focuses on reusing and recycling products. The circular economy can create jobs in repair,remanufacturing, reuse, and recycling. These jobs could be spread throughout the UK and could help to address regional unemployment. The government can support the circular economy by setting ambitious targets and providing financial incentives.
The transition to a green economy will create many new jobs around the world, including in sub-Saharan Africa. But will women share in these new jobs, and will the economic transformation help them move into higher-paid, more stable jobs that require more education and skills? This brief presents some insights into the green job opportunities available for women in Sub-Saharan Africa and provides policy recommendations to establish appropriate and enabling policies and programmes to ensure that women get an equitable share of green jobs.
This report highlights the key findings and recommendations from a global online survey organized by Plan International. The survey captures the opinions and experiences of young people on climate change education and their participation in climate policy processes.
