Coupling environmental and social sustainability: countries’ trajectories, pathways and policies towards sustainable job creation

This chapter discusses pathways and policies to decouple job creation from carbon dioxide emissions. It presents an empirical assessment of the progress (or lack thereof) towards environmental sustainability and jobs creation, highlighting stylized facts of the key relationships linking jobs creation to carbon dioxide emissions, energy efficiency, and global shares in carbon dioxide emissions. The chapter then proposes five potential decarbonization pathways that countries can pursue to achieve green transition: (i) planned phase-out of or exit from fossil fuel industry extraction for energy generation and export; (ii) decarbonization of existing energy-intensive industries; (iii) development of new renewable technology industries; (iv) development of new and retrofitting of existing energy infrastructure; (v) circular economy models. Such pathways can only be pursued if countries deploy well-designed industrial policies to coordinate sector-specific decarbonization efforts and seize opportunities for jobs creation. The chapter concludes by discussing different industrial policy instruments and provides examples of their use in Chile, South Africa, the United Republic of Tanzania, and Thailand.